Oh, how I love mushrooms. And anything cooked in wine.
This burgundy beef stew is from a book called Cast Iron Cooking, but I never had a big cast iron pot till this Christmas (thanks Laura!). I’ve always made it in my regular pot, but I bet it would be even better in cast iron.
Cooking with wine
I don’t drink wine, I just cook with it, which would explain why I always wander down the alcoholic beverages aisle in Walmart a few times before I can find what I’m looking for. That being said, I’m pretty sure I scoured that aisle in search of “burgundy” and found none. There’s probably some key piece of wine wisdom out there that would have solved my problems, but I ended up using merlot because it was also the color of red. I think the previous time I used pinot noir. The recipe says any dry red wine will work. It’s probably amazing with burgundy, but I may never know. Nor will I know until a truly dry red wine hits the $3.95 bin at Walmart. Oh, the places my taste buds could go…
Don’t be like me.
(Unless you’re poor cheap frugal, in which case, draw up a folding chair and we can share some tap water and have a nice little chat.)
Ingredients
How about I write the official ingredients, and then I write what I actually used next to it? I’m pretty sure there is not a single morel mushroom to be found in Fort Worth.
- 5 slices bacon, chopped (I used thick-cut)
- 4 Tbs unsalted butter, divided (I always use unsalted, but if you have salted, it’s perfectly fine to use)
- 8 oz. small button mushrooms (see below)
- 4 oz. morel mushrooms, chopped (Instead of using button and morel mushrooms, I just used “regular” mushrooms and cut them into chunks. And then I added some more, because mushrooms and I have a special relationship like that.)
- 16 small white onions, peeled, or 1 cup frozen pearl onions, thawed and drained (I used 1 large onion, roughly chopped)
- 1 carrot, chopped
- 2 lbs beef chuck, cut into 1 1/2″ cubes (I used “stew beef” and cut it into approximately 1-inch chunks)
- 2 Tbs flour
- 3 cups dry red wine
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 cup beef broth
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme (or a good shake of dried thyme… maybe 1/4 tsp?)
- 2 sprigs fresh sage (same as with the thyme)
- 2 bay leaves
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 Tbs chopped fresh parsley (or a few good shakes of dried parsley… maybe 1/2 tsp?)
Directions
It takes a little while to cook, but it’s worth it.
- Cook bacon over medium-high heat until crisp. Remove the bacon pieces to a plate and set aside.
- Add 2 Tbs of butter to the bacon fat. When melted and stirred, add mushrooms and cook for about 3 minutes until just tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add the onion and carrot and sauté until vegetables are tender (maybe another 7 minutes). Transfer vegetables to the bacon plate with a slotted spoon and set aside.
- Melt the remaining 2 Tbs butter in the pan and add the beef, stirring and cooking until browned on all sides. Add the flour, stir, and cook about 3 more minutes so the flour can brown.
- Pour the red wine slowly into the pan and stir, scraping up the
nectar of heavendrippings from the bottom of the pan. Bring to a boil and add garlic, broth, thyme, sage and bay leaves. When the mixture is boiling, reduce to a low simmer, cover and cook for 1 hour. Your kitchen will smell wonderful. - Dump the bacon and vegetables back into the pot and season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook for another 30 minutes. Stir in parsley a few minutes before serving.
We had this with a side dish of boiled potatoes. I had never made boiled potatoes before, as they seemed too boring, but OH. Not these. I’ll post the recipe for that later.
Sauté the bacon:
While it cooks, you can cut up the beef:
And the mushrooms:
And the onions (I don’t have a picture of the carrots… sorry):
Cook the veggies until tender:
Then remove them to the bacon plate and try desperately not to eat them:
Mmmmmm drippings….:
Add the beef:
Stir to brown on all sides:
Add the red wine and seasonings and other stuff:
And after a loooong time of self-restraint, you have this:
Which tastes like this:
Do you have any red wine wisdom you’d like to pass along? Is “burgundy” simply a code name for something else?
bonjourhan 