Beef Bourguignon, But Actually Done Properly

There are a lot of bad versions of this French classic, the beef bourguignon. Here's our tips and tricks to show you how to make the ultimate version. First step of our bourguignon is going to be the meat. We are going to be blending three different cuts together. We've got short rib. This is going to add beautiful, luxurious fat to the bourguignon. Chin of beef, which is laced with all this marrow and collagen, connective tissue, which is going to break down into our stew and enrich the sauce. And then the third cut of meat we're using is the chuck. This is going to add flavour, depth and caramelisation and give a real brown, caramelisation, maillard reaction to the stew. So the first step is going to be to take a large, heavy-bottomed pan, place some oil in there and we're going to put that on to a medium heat. So I'm going to season the flour and we're going to flour the meat. And what this is going to do is it's going to help to develop the crust and also thicken the sauce as it's cooking. But we only want a very light crust. So we're just going to lightly flour each piece of meat on as many sides as we can. Tap it off generously. It's not an essential step, like if you were doing this at home, you could do it without. It's one of those things that it's just a really good touch that's going to help level it up. If you did it without it, you just might need to reduce the sauce a little bit further. If you leave too much flour on there, what you could end up with is the crust can be quite hard to develop. I'm going to brown the short ribs off and the shin first. You don't want to go too high a heat here because you want to build the crust. The caramelisation you get on this beef, once you've added the stock and the water, that is what's going to impact into the stock and give the sauce the real depth of flavour. There was a peasant dish around the 18th century in rural France where they would take the tougher cuts of meat and they would braise it in the local red wine, which was very, very cheap at the time. And it would obviously soften up the meat and make a hearty stew. Bourgeoisie era people like Carême and Escoffier turned this humble peasant dish into something lavish and rich. Things that would be in the banquet halls of kings and queens of the era. Going full circle then went back to being a very humble dish, popularised by people like Julia Child in the modern day America. So what we've tried to do is take inspiration from all of those different recipes that we've found. Humble dishes and fine dining Michelin dishes and put our spin on it. So the first thing which we're doing differently is the three different cuts of meat, which we think gives a far superior finished product. I want to go nice. The flour should get it to stop sticking. You can already see that crust developing there. There's nothing being left on the bottom of the pan here, so we're keeping all that flavour locked into the meat. While that's going, I'm going to prepare my vegetables. I'm going to leave the veg very chunky. We're going to be using all the humble ingredients, so we're just going with carrots and onions. I want quite a clean flavour. Okay, so now I've taken out my few cuts on the bone there. Now I've just gone in with the chuck. Just going to follow the exact same process. Again, just taking our time, developing that crust. And I would definitely say that taking the time with the meat is one of those ones which I think makes a real difference. Because you can rush this stage and just chuck in your meat, give it a quick roast, take it out. But the crust, all this caramelisation, is what's going to give you the really meaty, beautiful, developed flavour of the stock. So once your meat is beautifully coloured, you can take it out. And then I'm going to turn the heat off my pot. And then I'm going to go in with my carrots and my onions. I like to put the lid on and just leave it for a couple of minutes. And what this is going to do is the residual heat in the pan, along with the water content in the onions and the carrots, is going to help to steam off any of that caramelised meat that you've got on the bottom of the pan. So then we're going to place the heat on low. And I'm just going to caramelise this veg nicely in the leftover fat. So as you can see, the vegetable oil has picked up all that caramelisation off the bottom of the pan. And then with your wooden spoon, you're just going to keep scraping the bottom of the pan, lifting up all that flavour. Once you've got a little bit of colour on there, we're going to go in with some crushed garlic. We don't need a crazy amount of colour on our vegetables. We're just looking to start the process of the caramelising. I'm a real believer that, you know, what you put in is what you're going to get out of it. If you really take the time to caramelise your meat properly, season it well, cut your vegetables nicely, really nicely deglaze them, deglaze the pan. Just take care and attention in every step. The end result will be so much better for it. After the veg is lightly caramelised, we're then going to go in with some tomato puree. And again, we're just going to roast that off very gently, a nice low heat. When we were researching this recipe, one of the things we found is that Joel Robichon has a very good recipe where he reduces the wine separately. So we're taking inspiration from that in the layers of the bourguignon here. Next, I'm going to go in with my hard herbs. So I've got some thyme, some bay leaf, I've got a couple of parsley stalks, heavy on the thyme. And then we're going to remove the vegetables and then reduce the red wine in the same pan. Again, just making sure we clean all the edges, get all that flavour off. So that's had a couple of minutes there caramelising. Next, we're going to remove this, all the veg from the pan. So then we're going to go in with the red wine and we can reduce this on a high heat. Okay, so once our wine is reduced by about half, we're then going to start adding up all the other ingredients back into the pan. So we're going to go in with our vegetables and our hard herbs and we're going to place our meat into the pan as well. Add some nice beef stock. It doesn't need to be a crazy reduced beef stock, just a nice light beef stock is fine because it's going to be cooking for so long. And I always think you want to go heavy with the stock. You never want to have a bourguignon that's not got enough sauce. It's all about that sauce. We're then just going to bring that up to a simmer before placing it into an oven. Now you can do this at a few different temperatures. Obviously, if you're doing it throughout the day, I would recommend sort of 125, 130 and that would take about six to eight hours. Or if you want to pop this in sort of overnight, you could also do that, sort of like 80, 90 degrees and it would take about 10, 12 hours. And the last thing is going to be our cartouche to go on the top. A little bit of the stock to run over the top to keep it submerged. Into the oven she goes. So once our meat has cooled down, remove a few of these hard herbs from the top. We're going to strain the meat from the sauce. We want to keep the meat as whole as we can. Obviously, it's pretty broken down. And I'm just going to let that drain for a couple of minutes. Pass this through a chinois or a conical strainer into a new pan to remove the impurities. And then we can reduce that to our desired consistency. And then we can just place that onto our stove and just reduce it slightly. It shouldn't take too long, but it just means that we can adapt that final seasoning, get the flavour and the balance of the sauce perfect before we add the garnish. So what we're going to do to finish our sauce, we're going to add fresh smoked streaky bacon. Now I never like in a bourguignon that the onions and the mushrooms are all knackered and overcooked. So I like to roast them off at the end, fresh. So we're going to put our mushrooms into the pan. Just a touch of oil. We want a nice, nice roast on those. So you season the mushrooms once they've got a bit of colour. Look at that beauty. ------- beauty, mate. Little knob of butter at the end, just give those mushrooms a final going over. And next we're going to go in with our bacon into the same pan. So once the bacon is roasted, we're going to place that in with our mushroom, leaving as much fat in the pan as you can. And then we're going to go lastly in with our onion. Turn the heat right down and just slowly roast in all that fat from the bacon and the mushroom. So these are beautiful little pearl onions. Otherwise, if you can't find these in your local sort of greengrocer or supermarket, you can easily use just like nice wedges of red onion or little wedges of white onion. You can roast them in the oven. Cut side down if you weren't able to find these. You can often quite find these sort of like frozen in like supermarket aisles if you wanted this exact onion. So just add a little knob of butter and then we're just going to slowly continue to caramelise those down in the bacon fat and the butter. We're adding some steps of finesse here by utilising different cuts of meat, roasting everything separately, straining the sauce, enhancing the finesse. But we're trying not to lose the integrity of what it is, which is a humble dish. Parsley, beef, onions, mushrooms, like keep it fairly simple in the flavour profile. So now the sauce is reduced, we can now place our meat back inside to glaze it up. So I'm going to place our mushroom and bacon mix into the bourguignon as well. Hit of the parsley. And we just gently warm that through. We're serving our beef bourguignon with the classic pomme purée. Let's give it a go. What's happening here? Can I have a little bit? Three bits. Mmm. It is rip. Perfect winter's day. You've got the fire on. I think it's one of those ones where you can put all your, you can put whatever twist you want on it as well. If you don't like mushrooms, you can leave them out. You can make the sauce more refined, you can make it richer by using more wine, less wine. It's a really classic. I think it's one of those ones that's really like, it's like one of the mothers of like casseroles and stews. But if you learn this method, and then adapt it to what other different, whatever type of meat and vegetables you have, you've got a really amazing fundamental base for how to make a stew. And the beef bourguignon feels like... Elite. The godfather of like braises. This is, the combination of different meats here is absolutely banging. And the fact that you've not overcooked any of the vegetables. Yeah, I love that, I love that. I think it's more like, that feels like more of a restaurant touch, but I think it's one of those ones that you can easily... Layering the flavour and layering the cooking techniques is a real restaurant tip. Which I think is probably unique to a recipe that we might do, rather than like a one pot wonder as such. But I think it really does, I really think it's worth the extra effort. From the French courts of aristocracy, to the flavour boys. In our dungeon in St. James.