Boeuf

Here is the thing… I have made beef bourguignon a la Julia twice now and I have not documented this with pictures. I am pretty into the recipe because it is such a marathon but I am not a beef stew fan. Of course beef stewed in bacon and wine is a step in the right direction. It is a crime because it is such a long process and I feel compelled to share it, a la Renee. I think this post will be much less interesting than if it had pictures. Of course our vegetarian friends probably don’t want to look at bloody hunks of beef.

I do as Julia says and get my beef bits and make stock from scratch which takes 5 hours. It isn’t hard work, you just throw the beef bits, leeks, onions, carrots, and maybe celery into the pot, cover with water. Bring it to a boil and then simmer for 5 hours. While that is happening you can brown the beef. I am not going to go into details because I will probably post about this later with full details including the kind of meat I buy and everything but I do think you should know that you must MUST dry your beef. Or it will not brown. DRY THE BEEF! Julia is pretty insistent on this and this tip was even featured in the motion picture Julie and Julia. I dry it with paper towels which can be pretty tricky since we don’t really keep paper towels on hand. In this case it was okay because I wasn’t cooking at our house. Anyways, you brown the meat, take it out of the pan, deglaze the pan with wine and cover the meat with wine and spices. Here is the a la Renee part, I put the meat in the crock pot. Julia makes it on the stove and in the oven. Really??? Why? It takes hours, use the crock pot. So I put it in there, when the stock is done, I add that and then crock it all for about overnight.

This time we served it over big whole wheat noodles, and Dave much preferred that. So that is how it all happens. Then Dave eats it every day all week. Which is pretty amazing since he has very low tolerance for left-overs.