Are you looking for an amazingly delicious long-form cooking project for a lazy, winter Sunday? Then read on, fellow food enthusiast!
This recipe is a riff off of a recipe from Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, but adjusted to our tastes. This recipe will feed four and it’ll take about 3 hours to make, but a lot of that is just watching the pot simmering on the stovetop while sipping a glass of good wine.
You can serve this either over mashed potatoes or over noodles (the last time we made it we served it over home-made pappardelle (very wide) noodles. Holy cow! That’s what you see in the picture above.
Ingredients
- 2 lbs nicely marbled, thick ribeye, trimmed and cut into 1″ cubes
- 3-4 carrots, peeled and sliced
- 1 large onion, large dice
- 6-10 sprigs of fresh thyme
- 3 bay leaves
- 10 parsley stalks
- 1 head of garlic
- 30ish pearl onions
- 1 container mushrooms cleaned and quartered
- 2 T fresh parsley, chopped
- 1.5 C chopped tomatoes or canned plum tomatoes
- 4 T EVOO
- 2 C beef stock
- 1 bottle decent red wine (plus more to drink)
- 2 T butter (room temp)
- 2 T flour
Protip: If you are thinking ahead, do a quick-age on your ribeye – 24 to 72 hours before you begin cooking, put your rib-eye on a plate – generously salt it (both sides) and set it, uncovered in your fridge. It’ll be even more tender and flavorful.
First, grab yourself some cheese cloth. Separate the cloves of garlic and smash them under the blade of a large kitchen knife (no need to peel). Put the garlic cloves, thyme sprigs, parsley stems and bay leaves in the cloth and tie up with cooking twine. Set aside.
Protip: buy cheese cloth at a home improvement store rather than a cooking store – it’s the same stuff and way cheaper!
Grab a large dutch oven (with a good fitting lid) and put it on the stove and heat up 2T of EVOO. Add the diced onion and carrots and cook until soft.
Meanwhile, in a frying pan, heat the other 2T of EVOO. Salt the cubed ribeye and working in batches, brown the meat cubes on all sides. When browned, toss them in the dutch oven with the onions and carrots.
When you have browned all the meat, toss in about 1C of red wine into the frying pan and deglaze with a wooden spoon. Add that to your dutch oven as well.
Using your spoon, clear an area in the center and nestle in your cheese cloth bundle of herbs. Toss the chopped tomatoes on top and then pour in 1C of beef stock and the rest of the wine.
Cover and simmer on low heat for just over 2 hours (start checking at about 90 minutes). Stir, but rarely.
In another saucepan, boil some salted water and blanche the pearl onions for 1 minute and then drain in a strainer. When they cool slightly, peel off the outer layer of onion skin.
As your cooking time wraps up, mix together the butter and flour in a small bowl and add about 1/2C of the simmering liquid and mix into a nice slurry. Remove the cover of the dutch oven and start to gently reduce the liquid.
In your frying pan (have a lid handy), toss in your onions and the final 1C of stock. Cover and cook for 8-10 minutes. Then, remove the lid and toss in the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper. Don’t stir too vigorously – you want the mushrooms and onions to brown. Give the pan a few tosses as they cook together, letting the liquid evaporate and getting a nice caramelization.
Add your flour/butter slurry into the dutch oven and stir until the sauce thickens to a nice consistency. Taste and adjust seasoning.
To serve, spoon boeuf bourguignon over fresh pasta or mashed potatoes. Top with the onion/mushroom mixture and finish with some chopped parsley.
