The Boeuf bourguignon everyone can make | One pot wonders - Ep. 2

So, last week we did a chicken fricassee, which is a white ragout. Fricassee is the pseudonym of the white ragout. This week, total opposite. We're going to do the brown ragout. We're going to revisit the Boeuf Bourguignon, and this is called the Estouffade Bourguignon. When you hear Estouffade, it means it is a brown ragout, but we're going to make it the easy way, straightforward, again, in a one-pot version that may again surprise you. Let's go. All right, time to make a Boeuf Bourguignon one-pot style. Now, the one question I'm getting all the time when I go to a friend's house, you know, it is this. Do we serve the carrot with Boeuf Bourguignon? Tricky question. In fact, when you make it by the book, you use an aromatic garnish with some celery, carrot, and onion to cook the meat, but you then discard it, and you don't serve the carrot with the Boeuf Bourguignon. The garnish that is served with the Boeuf Bourguignon is typically sauteed mushroom, caramelized onion, and sauteed bacon, but we're not at school, we're not in a restaurant, so today we're going to leave the carrots in because it's one-pot, and no big deal. Now, another interesting thing you may want to know is that back in the days, the Boeuf Bourguignon was not cooked with this, which is red wine. It was cooked only using Madeira wine and cognac. Imagine this, because this, the red wine in the day, that was for peasants. Like, hey, he's drinking red wine. Like, that's ridiculous. But of course, today's modern times, and having a red wine is pretty good, so get ready to do the mise en place, and we're starting the recipe. Okay, so the mise en place, what do we need? Very simple, the onions. We're using pearl onions, mini onions like this. You try to peel them nicely, and you leave them whole. That's the first thing, okay? Just peel them and wash them. Mushrooms, what are we going to do with these? We're going to take a knife, and you can quarter them like that. That's all it needs to be done, okay? Next, garlic. We're going to use some garlic. What do you do? Boom, crush it, and you're done. Now, did I tell you about the bouquet garni? What is a bouquet garni? Those people were asking me, so you got this. It's with a piece of a leek leaf. You get this. Sometimes, this is normal time, you get this, which is some parsley branches. You can fold it together like that, and if you want, you can add even this, a piece of celery on top of that. You're going to put a bay leaf, and all that you do with that bouquet garni is that you're going to roll this like that, and then take a string like this, and then mix everything together, attach it, and you're done, and basically, that's it. For the carrots, we're going to just peel them. I like to use a small one because you can leave them whole. If you don't like that, you know what? You can cut them in half. It's up to you, but that's about it. The meat, so of course, you need to get something that is suited for slow cooking. This is chuck steak. You see all these little pieces of some fat. You got some lean part, and all what you need to do is to kind of detail this in little chunks like that. You can do smaller if you want. You can just cut this in half, but it will shrink during cooking, okay? So you're going to take your piece of meat, and you're going to cut it. The other option is this that I absolutely love. These are the short ribs, beef short ribs. I asked the butcher to cut them in half, and they're super compact and easy, and they diffuse lots of flavor. I also like to keep the rind for my bacon here, and I'm going to throw this in the dish to give some more taste, okay? So that's for the beef. We got the bacon, and this is the other bacon. Now, this is bathing in liquid, and this is my little trick. I'm pouring Madeira wine into the bacon here and leave it to marinate for half an hour or something, and I'm going to pour the juice into the preparation. It's going to further enhance the flavors, and you're going to have this, you know, taste from the old days, so all done. So this is my meat, and the thing not to forget, of course, before anything, you don't season in your dish. Otherwise, all this excess salt is going to ruin your dish, but a good amount of salt and pepper on there, and I like to put a good seasoning to start with. I guess there's a minimum of adjustment to do at the end. All right, so let's make this special bourguignon one-pot style. Cast iron pot, again, I'm using a larger one, and the first thing we're going to do is to add about, you can put like about a tablespoon of oil, sunflower or grapeseed oil, and contrary to the last time where we didn't color anything, this is going to be totally the opposite. High heat, and we're going to be searing the meat properly on all sides in batches. All right, so the color is this kind of brown here that we have, this, and the same goes for the short ribs, use them on all sides. Boom, sear, sear, sear. Last bit of meat is nice and brown. I'm going to reserve this, and immediately using this, we're going to start to sear all the other garnish because we're making a one-pot. Best to do bit by bit. I'm going to start with the mushrooms. I'm going to add, you can add butter, but I think some oil is fine. Now, if you want, which is what I'm going to do, you can also throw in your onions in there. We're not going to kind of caramelize them, but just try to give a bit of color, and mix the whole thing together while it's cooking. And if you need a little bit more fat, as I said, you can add a bit of more oil if you like. Okay, so that's as far as it should go. No need to overdo it. Now, I'm going to scoop this out and immediately start the bacon. Bacon goes in. And you know, it was bathing into the Madeira wine, so it's a bit humid, and it's good because the pan here starts to be a little bit dryish, but the fat in the bacon is not super fatty bacon I've got today. They only had the loin one. It's not my favorite. I prefer the streaky one, but hey, just going to try to color it a little bit. Perfect. Same thing here. I'm going to scoop this out, and then the meat goes back in. So now our meat is back, and there's a crucial step or two. First, something that Paul Bocuse likes to do always, any brown stews, a little bit of tomato paste like this to enhance the color is a good thing, okay? Kind of mix it around, and it's going to help for the coloring. The second thing I'm going to do here is to claim back all of these juices at the bottom. By using the Madeira wine ahead, okay? And I'm going to wait for this to be almost dry, and I'm just going to dilute it with the tomato in there. It's going to be lovely. Finally, before we put the garnish back in, we're going to add this thing here. This is toasted flour. It's a flour that I've cooked in a dry pan to give the chestnut color, and it's going to give nutty aroma to the dish and, of course, thicken the sauce. So what we're going to do here, we're going to carefully kind of mix the whole thing with the juice in the flour, and you get the gist, so perfect. And now we can add our garnish, and same thing here because it's a one pot, you need to have enough space. You're trying to raise everything and make sure the onions and everything is kind of nicely dispersed. Don't overdo it, but if you can bury the onions under a little bit, it's fine. And now we're going to pour the wine. Now here comes the interesting part because we're not going to be using a stock because that's a way of doing the dish here. So we're going to put a bit of wine, about a bottle, and top up with a bit of water. Okay, and here you can afford having enough water to just about cover the meat. So I'm going to check, and you adjust to make sure there's enough. I think I'm going to need a little bit more. Now, if you want less wine, it's fine, but don't think that it's too much wine because honestly, if you don't have that red wine taste in a beurre bourguignon, it's not a beurre bourguignon. That's nice, look at this. So now we're going to bring this to a light boil, and I'm going to put this one, which is the skin or the rind. How do you call this? The rind from the bacon. Okay, I'm going to put my bouquet garni, try to bury it somewhere deep in there. And of course, don't forget the garlic, very important. Again, Paul Bocuse always said, anything with red wine needs to have garlic into it. And I've tested that theory. I did it without garlic, and it's really, honestly, it's not the same. It's not the same. Got a few carrots and something. I maybe should have cut them in half. What do you think? I'll see how I go. And then we'll bring this to a light boil. All right, the reason we're bringing this to a light boil is this. You see all these impurities floating on there? This, aka, it's called the scum as well. You scoop it out when you want to work properly, and you clean as much as you can the top of there. Now, if you remove a bit too much liquid, just before cooking this, you're simply going to add a little bit of water, okay? So I'll do a bit of cleaning, and I'll show you what's the next step. I'm done. So as you can see, there's always a little bit of it that will go on the surface. It's not a big problem. If you want, you can remove more. And now it's ready. I've turned my heat off, and we're going to preheat our oven at 160 degrees Celsius. Put the equivalent fan out on the screen, and I'm going to put a lid on, transfer this to the oven, and let it slow cook in the oven for two and a half to three hours until the meat really falls apart or can be detached easily with a fork. And that's about it. So I'm going to do this, and we'll share the result together. Let's go. All right, after three hours of cooking, it is ready. I let it cool down a little bit so I can attach it and open it. But let's reveal what you get. And for the simple white bone version, we've just wine and water. This is the result when you don't touch it. Now, the first test you have to do, of course, is to look at the meat. And you see, three hours, it really, really falls apart. So you can see everything is just falling apart, falling off the bone on here, everything detaches. It's great. It's cooked the sauce. I think this being an old recipe from the old days, the amount of flour is maybe a little bit overkill. I think back in the days, they really loved flours and everything was like super thick. So I think I will adjust the amount of flour slightly so you have something just, you know, that's perfectly, you know, a little bit thick, but not too much. But away from that, honestly, it's not bad. What's left to do is just to dig in. So this is what I've been plating. Just a sample, some carrots, some things. And remember, this is the one pot. All what I did was throw everything in there. And, you know, so let's see how it compares. You see how the meat falls apart? I mean, look at that. You know, it's really, mm. It is definitely perfectly cooked. I mean, it's really, you know, I think I can do some a bit more sauce in there. Look at that. Just got some sauce because if you have a bourguignon, you don't have enough sauce. It's not right. You want actually plenty of oil. You can put a little bit more and I'm starving. No, that's it. All right, so let's have a final word. The meat is perfectly cooked. The sauce, that's what I want to check. How tasty is it? It's quite fatty. You need to remove the fat if you have chuck beef. I can feel the wine, but it's kind of dissolved actually. The onions, the seasoning is all right. I think I should have put a little bit more salt while I was cooking it, but away from that, it's not bad for a one pot. So to finish, how this one pot bourguignon compares to the classic method with all the step, the marinade, et cetera, et cetera. To be honest, you are not far off from the real thing. I have to say that without the stock, the beefy flavor are there. It's subtle. You have the wine, but it's not as intense as what you will get when you use stock. But to be honest, with the minimum amount of effort you have to make this, this is highly recommended and it's brilliant. And that's it. We're all done. So next week, we're going to do something totally different and a dish that does not involve mushroom because some of you have been saying that it's true. French cooking has got mushroom all the time. So we are going to be making a one pot dish from Alsace called the Bakelof, which is also one of the subscriber requests. So one of you said, I hope we're going to see this and guess what? We are. So tuning again next week for something totally different. And this time, no mushroom. See you then.