Friday, April 23, 2010

Beef Bourguignon

Watching "Julie and Julia" made me curious about this dish called beef bourguignon.  It sounded wonderful and I had to try it.  I searched online for a recipe and saw that Julia Child's original recipe required over 4 hours of cooking! I searched until I found a modified recipe which required only 2 hours of cook time and then modified it even more. I went grocery shopping and was going to purchase pearl onions and then thought, "I don't like pearl onions" so I didn't buy them.  If I had used this same philosophy with the wine, my beef bourguignon might have ended up as a stir-fry. 
I don't want to bore you with all the details, so long story short; I bought my ingredients and went home to cook the beef.
Here's the beef bourguignon simmering in my new dutch oven!  After it simmered for a total of 4 hours (the meat was tough after 2 hours, so I left it in the oven), I drained the liquid and made a sauce by reducing the liquids and adding a flour-butter paste. 

My final assessment, I do not think I would make it again.  Why? It took a lot more time (and dishes) than I expected, I do not care for the taste of wine, and I do not like stewed meat.   Mike rolled his eyes when I told him that.  He was like, "Hello, if you make a recipe named 'beef bourguignon' there will be beef and wine in it." I knew that, I just was curious if I could make it or not. 
Mike enjoyed the dish.  He said it was a bit more gourmet than the beef burgundy that he makes at home in which its more like a stew and there isn't a sauce to pour over the meat and vegetables. 

3 comments:

Erika said...

I also thought it was kinda funny that you were making this dish given your general aversion for beef and/or wine... although my Mike doesn't like wine either but seems to always enjoy food I cook containing wine, so I thought maybe that might be the case for you as well. Can you post the recipe (the original with or without your modifications)?

Kendell said...

looks yummy!

genkitummy said...

Erika, here's the recipe I kind of followed: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/beef_bourguignon/

I didn't make the pearl onions, used regular mushrooms, and made approximately 2/3 of a full recipe.