2010-01-10

Mushroom Beef Bourguignon


cotes du rhone
This weekend we had some friends over for dinner, and I wanted to make dinner using my new toy/ dutch oven. None of the recipes it came with  seemed quite right, I wanted something I could leave mostly unattended and that would cook for hours. I googled, I searched epicurious for "dutch oven" still nothing, so I decided to search Smitten Kitchen, success! I was going to make the vegetarian version, but had been feeling a bit anemic lately so decided to add the beef. The recipe seems like it could easily be made vegan by leaving out the beef, using veggie broth and substituting soy margarine; I bet it would still be delicious.

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen's Mushroom Bourguignon (serves 4 with a little left over)


bourguignon ingredients
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 3/4 lb beef stew meat 
  • 6 cups mushrooms, sliced (combination of portabella & crimini)
  • 1 smallish yellow onion, finely diced
  • 1 large carrot, finely diced
  • 1 tsp fresh thyme (all my normal thyme seems to have died, so I used the flourishing "caraway thyme")
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 cup red wine
  • 2 cups beef broth
  • 2 tbsp tomato paste
  • 1 cup pearl onions
  • 1.5 tbsp flour

      browned beef mushrooms
      1. Heat 1 tbsp butter and olive oil in dutch oven or large heavy pot.  Brown beef and remove. Briefly brown mushrooms and remove (careful not not let them weep)
      2. Add 2nd tbsp olive oil to pot then saute onion, carrots & thyme along with a bit salt & fresh ground pepper until onion is translucent and beginning to brown. Add garlic, cook briefly then add wine. Turn up heat until wine is reduced by half (if your beef chunks are large you may want to cut them into smaller pieces now), then add beef broth & tomato paste
      3. Add beef and simmer, covered, on low heat until beef is exceptionally tender (this took several hours, don't worry about overcooking it)
      4. Once beef is falling-apart tender add mushrooms and give it all a good stir. Keep cooking on low, covered, stirring occasionally. After mushrooms have shrunken add pearl onions, and continue to cook as before until mushrooms are tender. (or longer, I ended up having started too early so the food simmered, just barely, a good hour at this point)
      5. Mash the remaining butter & flour together, and stir the paste into the bourguignon. Start the water for your noodles and let cook
      6. Serve bourguignon over egg noodles with a dollop of sour cream. I Accompanied it with butter lettuce salad in lemon vinaigrette. Success!

        dinner

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