Beef bourguignon: comforting and celebratory

Burgundy beef stew – meat stewed in wine, mushrooms fried on bacon, everything together is very, very tasty. Such a stew can be safely prepared for holidays, and if it is served with potato “gratin”, it is completely restaurant-like!

I found the recipe Delia Smith in the book Complete Cookery Course, first published in 1978, and then reprinted many times. Maniškė in 1990

I’ll admit, I usually make an almost Burgundian stew. Why “almost” – because the wine is not from Burgundy. I use some decent red, sometimes French, from other regions, and sometimes from other countries… And also small onions, they are needed according to the recipe, along with mushrooms and bacon. Small, pearly bulbs are traditionally used, in English pearl onions, and in French – oignois grelots. These are small, white bulbs, 2-3 cm in size, they retain their shape when fried and become fresh, and I have never seen them in stores, but canned, unfortunately, is not suitable… because they would acidify the dish. Many recipes now replace these bulbs with shallots, even the same Delia’s website already lists shallots in the ingredients list.

Ingredients

500g good beef, preferably aged, this will have less moisture and brown nicely, not to mention the extra flavor that aging gives
Olive oil for cooking
1 large onion, finely chopped
Garlic, several cloves
Dried herbs, thyme, marjoram, bay leaf
Pepper, salt
Red wine, 250 ml

Smoked bacon, 100g
Mushrooms, boletus is ideal, but champignons will also work, the darker ones are better. Dried boletus powder greatly improves the taste.
A spoonful of flour to “bind” the sauce

Manufacturing

I heat the slow cooker well (I cook in a steel pressure cooker, I also fry in it) and brown the cubed meat well with a little olive oil, take your time, wait until the edges are nicely browned, it will add a lot of flavor to the stew later.

I take out the meat and add the chopped onions, reduce the heat so that the onions “release” their juices at the beginning, this moisture “unhooks” all the roasting from the pan, I add a little salt to evaporate the moisture even faster, then I add a little oil to the already slightly fried onions and leave them to slowly caramelize. Again, there is no need to rush, it is better to wait until the onions become transparent and acquire a beautiful, amber color. This is how they become sweet and fragrant. If I see the onions starting to burn, I just add a little water.

When the onions are done, I put back the meat, add salt, add spices, add wine and close the pressure cooker to stew.

In the pressure cooker, the meat will be tender in an hour, if you cook it in the crockpot, expect to wait longer and you may need to add a little more wine to deglaze.

While the meat is stewing, I fry smoked bacon and mushrooms over low heat. Ideally, if you have fresh boletus, or at least those trumpets (trumpet mushrooms?) that look like boletus, but are not, but it is more realistic to fry boletus, then choose the brown ones. If you have dried boletus, rub it in, or you can also add oil with truffles or salt with truffle salt, it adds a lot of flavor. At the end, I add a spoonful of flour. The flour is fried in fat and then, when everything is added to the stew, it thickens the sauce.

When the meat is already cooked, I add the fried mushrooms with bacon and cook for at least a few more minutes so that the sauce thickens.

I taste to see if there is anything missing and can be eaten. Very tasty with mashed potatoes.

Delicious!