Beef Bourguignon

Beef Bourguignon (or Beef Burgandy) is a simple stew that is cooked with wine.

I tried this recipe (based on Gordon Ramsay's) because I had found some pretty cheap beef which would require a long cooking time in order to become tender.  I changed a few of the ingredients to more accessible ones (I have no idea where to find Goose Fat in Tokyo).  Because this dish uses bacon while cooking, it helps keep the beef from drying out and the end results are extremely tender and juicy.

The recipe follows after the jump...

Let's take a look at what I used for this recipe.

Ingredients

• 2 or 3 tsp olive oil
• 800g beef cut into large chunks
• 100g  bacon cut into small pieces
  
• One large onion quartered
• 300g mushroom (I used Japanese Maitake)
  
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1bouquet garni *
• 2tbsp tomato purée
• 750ml bottle red wine (I used Burgundy)

*A bouquet Garni is a small bunch of parsley, rosemary, thyme and a few bay leaves tied together into a small bundle.  This makes is very easy to remove it after cooking. (You wouldn't want to actually eat it).

On to the cooking.
1. Prepare your ingredients.
    -Bouquet Garni

  -Garlic

    -Mushrooms

    -Onions

   -Bacon

2.  Cut your beef into large chunks.  Season with salt and pepper.  Heat the olive oil in an oven-safe pot and brown the beef.  It's best to do it in small batches so the pieces can brown evenly.  Turn after a minute or two until all sides are browned.

3. After browning each batch of meat, remove from the pot and place in a strainer in a bowl.  This helps the beef keep its nice browned color without losing the juices that run off.

4. In the same pot brown the onions, bacon, mushroom, garlic and bouquet garni in a little olive oil, getting some color on the vegetables.

5. Add about 2 Tablespoons of tomato puree and brown some more.  This will make some flavor on the bottom of the pot, which will add a lot of flavor to the sauce.

6.  Return the beef to the pot.  Make sure you also add the juice that dripped from the meat.

7.  For the wine, I went with a pretty cheap table wine.  Only the best for my dishes!  Next time I'll actually try it out with a slightly better burgundy.  But remember, cooking wine doesn't need to be top class.

8. Go ahead and pour the full bottle in, as well as about 200cc of water.  You want the liquid to come up to just about the top of the meat, but not completely covering it.

9.  Make a cartouche for your pot.  Traditionally this is made from oiled paper, and is slightly smaller than the width of the pot.  A cartouche is used to slow down the evaporation of the liquid.  Unlike using a regular lid, though, the liquid still evaporates slightly, thickening the sauce.

I didn't have parchment paper, so I made mine out of tinfoil.  Just crumple it up a bit so it's easier to shape, and make it just fit inside the pot.

10. Time to practice patience. Put the pot into a 150°C (300°F) for three hours.  There's nothing else to do really.

You can use the time just before serving to prepare a vegetable dish to serve with this.  Or like I did, make some mashed potatoes. 

AFTERTHOUGHTS- 

Point 1.  When my stew was finished, the sauce was still quite thin.  If this happens, just remove the meat and veggies with a strainer and place in a separate dish and place the pot on the stove to help reduce the sauce a bit.

You can also mix water and a bit of flour together (in a separate cup) and add it to the soup to thicken it up.  Go slowly, you don't want to make play dough.

Point 2.  This stew can be made ahead of time (since it takes so long) and then frozen.  Just heat and serve with some freshly made veggies.