Home Style Beef Bourguignon (French Country Beef Red Wine Stew)

Beef is the most consumed protein in the US, Australia, and some of the Euro nations. Commercially, the beef product is quite convenient, comes in a wide range of variety, and generally affordable. You can find fresh, frozen, or processed beef products in the wet market or grocery shops. "Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)" is the commercial method of farming beef. Livestock is raised in a high dense farm. The common feed for the cattle is corn and grass. The feeding materials have an influence on beef texture and quality.

One of the French classics is "Beef Bourguignon". Bourguignon is a city in eastern France. Many of the classic food is named after the city or the name of the creator. In French pre-World War history, most of the civilians were poor where they work as a farmer in vinery, agriculture, livestock or fishermen. The profit earned from the hard work goes to the royalty, while the civilians find themselves in indulging the best flavor out of ordinary food. Therefore, you can find a lot of French classics actually evolved from not-so-fancy products. The modern restaurant added priced ingredients such as truffles, foie gras, caviars to the dishes so they could put it to a high profit-margin dish, which misleads French cuisine as a fancy treat.

Today I'm sharing a classic French food that you can do in a typical household kitchen.

Beef Bourguignon (Serves 4)

1kg Beef loin with some tendons and fats (Sirloin, striploin, short ribs or shoulder/ avoid using lean meat i.e. tenderloin/ avoid using expensive cuts i.e. WAGYU)

1pc (about 50g) smoked bacon (optional)

300g Potato, peeled, cut to cube

100g Carrot, peeled, cut to small cube (carrot cook slower than potato, therefore carrot has to be 1/2 the size of potato)

50g cherry tomato

50g mushroom

50g pearl onion (or baby shallot as an alternative)

30g garlic

200ml red wine (avoid sweet wine)

200ml stock (chicken/beef stock, otherwise water + 1/2 tsp chicken seasoning)

100ml vegetable oil (canola or pomace, avoid using extra-virgin olive oil)

bay leaf, thyme, paprika (very minimum quantity)
salt, ground pepper

Method

1. Trim the beef loin to bite-size cubes, remove excessive fats but do not discard the fats. 

2. Season the beef with salt and pepper. Set it on some kitchen towel, age in the fridge for 24 hours. This is a simple aging method that can help to intensify the beef flavor.

3. In a saute pan (non-stick shallow pan), heat the pan directly on medium heat with no oil. Drop the beef fat (or bacon) to extract the oil.

4. Add beef cubes, sear with high heat until brown (about 3 minutes, flip, another 3 minutes)

5. Add red wine, you may expect a flame on the pan if you did the searing correctly. 

6. When half of the wine evaporated (around 5 minutes after you added the wine), add in garlic, shallot, and spices. Add stock (or water).

7. Add potato and carrot. Simmer for 45 minutes. Adjust seasonings.

8. Add cherry tomato, mushroom, cook for 5 minutes.

9. Serve with bread or steamed rice.

P.s: Some may ask what is the alternative for red wine, unfortunately, the red wine is as important as using beef for this recipe to call it Beef Bourguignon. If you really had to i.e. for religious norm purpose, then the alternative is to use a 'Demi-glaze' - a highly dense brown stock made from beef that you can buy at grocery shops, it may more expensive than a glass of red wine.  

Et voila! bon appetit.

ZF

#Beefbourguignon #homestyle #beefstew #frenchclassic