Julia's Boeuf Bourguignon

Searching for a Boeuf Bourguignon recipe last weekend, I found Julia Child’s famous recipe, the same one we’d recently drooled over during Julie & Julia. I was up for the challenge I knew it would be, but in typical fashion, missing key ingredients. Namely, pearl onions and stew beef (we had thin-sliced beef meant for teriyaki, but my thought was the beef would cook more quickly and not require the full FOUR HOURS in the oven). The recipe has about a hundred steps.

First and foremost: Bacon. Sautéed in the same pan you’ll brown the beef and soften the onions, 6 oz. of delicious bacon kick things off. What better aroma to fill the kitchen with at the start of an endeavor like this?

For the Stew

• 6 ounces bacon, solid chunk
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 lbs lean stewing beef, cut into 2-inch cubes
• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced
• 1 onion, peeled and sliced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper, freshly ground
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 3 cups red wine (a full bodied wine like Bordeaux or Burgundy or Chianti)
• 2-3 cups beef stock (Simple Beef stock is posted on the site, unsalted and defatted)
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 2 garlic cloves, mashed (you may choose to add more)
• 1 sprig thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon dred thyme)
• 1 bay leaf, preferably fresh

While the bacon is browning, I dried each piece of beef and then placed each piece gently in the bacon fat to sear in the juices. When all of the meat was seared, a whole chopped onion and some carrots were added to soften them up in the bacon juices. Everything, the bacon, beef, carrots and onion were then placed lovingly in the dutch oven, sprinkled with the flour, salt and pepper, then into the 450º oven uncovered for 4 minutes. Stirred, then 4 more minutes in the oven.

After this, I finally got to add the stew mix of tomato paste, garlic, stock and bold Burgundy wine. After bringing to a boil on the stove top, the entire apartment smelled like a warm, winter restaurant in Provence. When I opened the jar of bay leaves to add one in, the spicy scent was almost too perfect amidst bubbling wine and beef.

While the stew is simmering in the oven for four hours, you can get a head start on sautéing the mushrooms in butter and braising the pearl onions in stock. Since my beef was already mostly cooked when I seared them and certainly tender after bubbling on the stove for 30 minutes, I was sure one hour in the oven would suffice. And—after my last Boeuf Bourguignon challenge on Bastille Day in 2008 when I hand-peeled 30 pearl onions over the course of 2 hours only to toss into the stew and watch them un-telescope into unrecognizable translucent slivers—I wasn’t missing the braised pearl onion aspect. So I frothed up some butter on the stove and browned the mushrooms to glistening wonders and waited for the stew.

Julia has you strain the stew and toss the onion and carrot cooked with it, retaining the broth to make gravy. Because I love cooked onions and carrots, I kept them in to supplement the lack of pearl onions. The gravy was easy enough to thicken by bringing it back to a boil on the stove and adding a tablespoon of flour.

Over a bed of thick, twisty egg noodles, I scooped a heaving serving of stew and enough gravy to coat the contents of the bowl. Topped with buttered mushrooms, the dish tasted how I imagine winter should be. Warm, with beef that flakes apart and tender bacon and carrots flavored by red wine and pepper. For a one-dish dinner, this has to be one of my favorites. I especially love how the whole apartment smells like a French kitchen.