Holiday Recipe: Julia's Beef Bourguignon

We here at Economy Bites are hunkering down as the East Coast winter blizzard blows through our lives. We've worked crazy hard to bring you 45 episodes this year (phew!) and, well, we think we deserve a teensy little break. Today's episode, a Christmas inspired-take on Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon, will be our last for the coming little while. We'll return in February with episodes from our BRAND NEW kitchen studio!

Don't worry, it's not nearly as nice as I'm making it sound.

Until then - Happy New Year, friends and eaters! We're looking forward to bringing the fun - and the delicious - in 2011!

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Beef Bourguignon

INGREDIENTS

8 strips Bacon

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 1/2 lbs lean stewing beef cubes

2 carrot, sliced

2 stalks celery, sliced

2 Tbsp flour

3 cups white wine

2 cups beef stock

1 Tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp Thyme

PROCEDURE

-Preheat oven to 450

-Heat olive oil in a heavy pot or dutch oven. Saute bacon on medium low until fat is rendered. Remove bacon, keep heat on in pot with fat.

-Use paper towels to dry beef a few cubes at a time - moist beef won't brown.

-Slice carrots and celery. Set aside.

-Brown beef on high heat a few pieces at a time in the bacon fat, about 3-4 minutes per batch. until every piece is browned. Remove beef to paper towels.

-After all the beef is cooked, add celery and carrots to pot and saute until soft, about 5 minutes.

-Add beef back to pot and turn off heat. Add flour and mix until all the beef is coated. Put pot in oven for 5 minutes or until flour is browned

-Turn oven down to 325

-Add wine, beef stock, tomato paste and thyme to the pot. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cover casserole with a lid and put it back in the oven for about 2 1/2 hours.

Enjoy!

 

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Comments

[Yisterwald]

02:18 PM on 01/05/2011

Julia's version does take a bit of fiddling, but most of the investment is in simmering time. If you make it on a weekend afternoon when you're just hanging the house you'll hardly notice the effort, but you'll be rewarded with a terrific dish with which to impress family, guests, or boyfriends/girlfriends. Plus it's a basic recipe that is closely related to other tasty dishes, like coq au vin, and can be modified extensively without harm.

Learn it, know it, live it. Julia was one of a kind, and this dish is a winner.

[Oldbull 56]

04:09 AM on 12/30/2010

This sounds like quite the tasty recipe and relatively simple for those of us who would be scared off by something a lot more complicated. If Julia Child was inspired to bring French Cuisine to the U.S., I see no reason why you can't be inspired by her efforts and do what you have done here. Thanks for sharing!

[camanokat]

04:04 PM on 12/29/2010

This looks like a very good recipe but it's not the Julia Child version and yes I saw it's "inspired by" but still! Last winter I made the authentic Julia version and it took forever. It had little cippiolini (sp?) onions and was delicious!