Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon (Beef Stew in Red Wine with Bacon, Onions, and Mushrooms) recipe
I am so excited for today! Today we are giving away our first prize at The Old Hen Blog and we’re making the most highlighted recipe in the movie Julie & Julia, Boeuf Bourguignon. If that isn’t enough, you also get to vote on what I will make next from Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Amy Adams as Julie Powell in Julie & Julia by Sony Pictures.
Here we go with the polite rebel’s version of Boeuf Bourguignon!
Step 1: A 6 oz. chunk of bacon – I didn’t realize that Julia meant an actual “chunk” of bacon until I dove into making the dish so I just used what I had purchased for the recipe. It wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t rebel against her at least once during the recipe, right?
I was kind of glad, actually, because I didn’t have to remove the rind and cut the bacon into lardons – whatever those are!
Simmer bacon for 10 minutes in 1 1/2 quarts of water. Drain and dry. – I thought it said 1 1/2 cups of water. See my little measuring cup in the above picture? What a dork! This is why I do not work in the field of nuclear waste.
Step 2: Preheat oven to 450 degrees. - Cool, I don’t think I have ever had my oven up that high for a recipe.
Step 3:
A 9 – 10 inch fireproof casserole 3 inches deep
1 Tb olive oil or cooking oil
A slotted spoon
3 lbs lean stewing beef cut into 2 inch cubes
Sauté the bacon in the oil over moderate heat for 2-3 minutes to brown lightly. Remove to a side dish with a slotted spoon. Set casserole – I believe that she meant the bacon here – aside. Reheat the fat until it is almost smoking.
Dry beef in paper towels; it will not brown if it is damp. Sauté it, a few pieces at a time – Again, oops; I tossed in the whole cow! – in the hot oil and bacon fat until browned on all sides. Add it to the bacon. - Okay, just in case you are lost, the browned bacon and the browned beef are now set aside in a bowl and the smokin’ fat is still in the casserole pot.
Step 4:
1 sliced carrot
1 sliced onion
In the same fat, brown the sliced vegetables. Pour out the sautéing fat.
Step 5:
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 Tb flour
Return the beef and bacon to the casserole (with carrots and onions) and toss with the salt & pepper. Then sprinkle on the flour and toss again to coat the beef lightly with the flour. Set casserole uncovered in middle position of preheated oven for 4 minutes. Toss the meat and return to oven for 4 minutes more. (This browns the flour and covers the meat with a light crust.) Remove the casserole, and turn oven down to 325 degrees. – Geez, this is definitely NOT my mother’s stew!
Step 6: Since you knew there couldn’t be just 5 steps in one of Julia’s recipes!
3 cups of a full-bodied young red wine or Chianti
2 to 3 cups brown beef bouillon
1 Tb tomato paste
2 cloves mashed garlic
1/2 tsp thyme
A crumbled bay leaf - This recipe cooks long enough that a dried bay leaf will work just fine.
The blanched bacon rind – Yeah, not so much. That seems to have come up missing, don’t you know?
Stir in the wine… I always feel so fancy when I add alcohol to these French dishes. Maybe that is why Julia wore pearls.
…and enough stock or bouillon so that the meat is barely covered.
Add the tomato paste, garlic herbs, and bacon rind – Enough with the rind. I’ve felt guilty since step one!
Then cover the casserole and set in the lower third of preheated oven. Regulate heat so liquid simmers very slowly for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. The meat is done when fork pierces it easily. – Confession time… I used my fast reading skills and ended up placing the casserole on the same rack as before (too high according to Julia), didn’t catch the part about covering it and went and took a nap while hoping that the stew would find it’s perfect simmering temp all on it’s own. I returned to a mighty fine casserole with less juice than it should have but otherwise just fine. I feel better now that I have that off my chest!
The garlic cloves are the pieces that you remove from the entire garlic bulb. Pictured above is a handy dandy garlic peeler
Here is a ceramic garlic grater. This is one of the few things that I bought at the fair that actually worked for me when I brought it home! You just rub the garlic clove around and it makes extremely fine mashed garlic. I use latex gloves so that I can still avoid garlic scented hand lotion!
Okay my infomercial is done. I just had to share these nifty tools with you because I heart them so much!
So here is where things get tricky. I am sure there is a reason for all of this somewhere in the depths of Julia’s soul but I have not found the reasoning behind all of the casserole shifting ballyhoo yet…
Step 7:
18-24 small white onions, brown-braised in stock, page 483 – With all due respect, I am not flippin’ another page of this cookbook just for a stew, even if it is fancy enough to make me want to wear my pearls. Omg! I think these onions she is talking about are called pearl onions! They might possibly be the cutest little veggie in the world. What a coincidence. I’m still not turning to page 483.
1 lb quartered fresh mushrooms
P.S. I just used the same onions as I used earlier in the recipe. I didn’t have any pearl onions around.
(While beef is cooking) prepare the onions and mushrooms. I just browned them in some butter. Set them aside until needed.
When the meat is tender, pour the contents of the casserole into a sieve (strainer?) set over a saucepan. – BTW, save the sauce! - Wash out casserole – what?? – and - get this – return the beef and bacon to it. - My back hurts from spending so long bending over while perplexed re-reading this over and over again. – Distribute the cooked onions and mushrooms over the meat.
Skim the fat off the sauce. Simmer sauce for a minute or two, skimming off additional fat as it arises. – What fat? I see none! – You should have about 1 1/2 cups of sauce thick enough to coat a spoon lightly. Taste carefully for seasoning. Pour the sauce over the meat and vegetables. – I’m pretty sure all of this was just so we could workout our arm muscles. This is the REAL reason that French women don’t get fat
So… with that all said, you could have just added the onions and mushrooms to the casserole and stirred them in!
Boeuf Bourguignon!
Minus the casserole tossing at the end of the recipe, this was worth every bit of the seven steps to get here. Bon appétit!
Vote on the next Julia Child’s recipe! Voting ends 08.30.09.
Julia Child’s Pommes Normande En Belle Vue (Applesauce Caramel Mold) recipe
Julia Child’s Chicken Broiled with Mustard, Herbs, and Bread Crumbs (Broiled Chicken) recipe
OMG! I love it. You are infectious! Now I have something else to try. It looks so good. You are a wiz in the kitchen.
Oh Deanna!! I’m in love. I have to make this sometime!
I just wanted to say congrats for being featured on Finest Foodie Fridays! Since we were featured the same week I thought I’d stop by and see who else was recognized along with me.
It’s incredible that you have time to blog and run a B&B!! Wow.
Wonderful illustration of recipe preparation. Your photos are great. Congratulations on your FFF award. Well deserved.
I just saw the movie today and ran out to buy a Cassoulet just like the one used in the movie. I noticed in your photos that you used a metal pan. Sur La Table, Bed Bath & Beyond,Tuesday Morning had them from $118. to $159. I found a skillet at cover and 3 qt. cassesole had $49 at Sam’s Club. I search because I came home to make the Boeuf Bourg…. I have ordered Julia’s cook books, but I got the recipe off the internet. I got stuck because the PDF file didn’t have page 142 for the braised pearl onions and mushrooms. I search those words and found your site. Thank you for the step by step photos! However, I want to know how to braise pearl onions and mushrooms. We didn’t have garlicand I couldn’t go to the store so (shhhh, I used granulated garlic). I’ll look for another of the recipe’s. Thanks! – Marian CI
I made this dish last night and got up to the step 7. I agree, the last few steps didn’t make sense to me. I read the last steps over and over again thinking…what? Whats a sieve?! I love your step by step pictures and comments! I am glad I am not alone on the “tricky” parts with making this dish. PS. I am also using regular white onions, not white little cute ones.
very entertaining post. it’s great to hear people suffer with some of the same confusion as me. I found a reprint of the BB recipe that included the onions. They are called white onions. My store had them in one of those mesh bags, about 12 so that’s how many I got. not 18-24. They are just a little larger than a golf ball. From what I can tell the cooking involves browning them in oil (whole). Then pour in beef stock, cover and simmer in liquid for 40-50 minutes. I guess they’ll come out very soft and soak up the beef flavor. Saute the mushrooms separately. They both get added to the beef after the sieve and cleaning casserole part. so the sauce gets poured over the meat, onions, and mushrooms and served. That’s what I get out of it. My family will all find out this evening because that’s what I’m cooking on this rainy Sunday. I’ll let you know.
My follow up to a day of cooking this Beef Bourguignon is, it was OK. I’m hyper-critical of my cooking and I thought the meat was a little dry. Not cardboard like one of the posts, but not what I was hoping for. The flavor of the sauce was wonderful. Maybe the lean cut was too lean? My wife loved it so maybe I’m too picky. I call it high standards.
The onions, however, were fantastic! That was my favorite part. Just brown them in a little oil, put stock and the herbs in the skillet, (about 1/3 to 1/2 submerged) cover and simmer for 45 minutes. They are soft and flavorful. A perfect complement to the dish.
I am glad I found your blog! You are so entertaining. I don’t think I have laughed so hard reading a food blog ever. Your thoughts into your writings are immensly humorous and I have had a great time reading these. Keep up the good work. I know I will keep coming back to see what you are going to get yoursself into next.
My wife and I watched the movie last night (RedBox to rescue). I don’t like to cook but the movie and food looked like fun. Tonight I type into Google “julie and julia beef stew” and up comes your site.
Very well written post and the pics help alot. Tomorrow I will buy the goods and following your instuctions I will make this for Friday night family dinner. The 5 year old will be the tough sell.
I look foward to seeing what else you have documented.
-Mark
Kansas City
Hey I really enjoyed this site. I really had no clue what i was exactly looking for, but i just got done watching Julie&Julia with my mom and the beef stew in it look completly legit. This may be surprising, but im only a middle schooler. It’s so weird, i know, that a middle schooler would be searching for food recipies. But i just wanted to say thanks to you for posting this recipe, its a whole lot easier (not to mention cheaper) to read his than to purchase the entire “mastering the art of french cooking” book.
I made this Dish yesterday after making many of Julia’s recipes.
5 1/2 hours from the time I started till the dishes were done!!
I was able to find all the proper ingredients (worried about the pearl onions) but got them anyhow. BTW the pearl onions in Julia’s book are worth the try. They are sooo… MMMmmmm. You just couldnt do it with cut up regular onions.
So far I have only tried a couple nibbles from the completed dish as I wanted it to sit overnight in the fridge to gain all possible flavor for todays dinner party. I plan on making the bread crumb stuffed tomatoes from the book because I had them the other night and couldnt stop eating them. They are quick also (comparitivly). I was hoping for a great baked potato dish in the book to go with boef B but looks like i will have to settle for a sliced potato version like graten.
Desert is the Mouse a la orange. Very rich, and grows on ya.
Cooking Bouef B is worth the aroma in the house alone!
The only part of the recipe I found misleading is the 2 inch chunks of beef and nowhere in the recipe does it tell you when to add the onions and carrots.
I first cut the beef 2 inches x 2 inches which would make a 2 inch cube right? Well thats huge and I decided to go with 1 x 1 instead which is what I think julia ment.
Dosent tell you when to add the carrots and onions so I assumed it was with the wine and beef for the baking part. I see you also did the same. Arrg. re-reading recipes over and over is not so much fun. Especially when theres a little guess work. I guess I just want to be meticulous with this book.
I love and i have be trying to find this recipe along time.
I am going to try this as well, as an anniversary dish for my husband this week. I am SO thankful I found your blog with the photos. Between your awesome step by step and my Google nearby, I think I can find what I need. We’ll see! I can’t wait. *drool* *drool*
My son’s girlfriend and I prepared Julia’s BB. It took us a lot of time (next time I am preparing the beef the day before and am preparing the pearl onions and mushrooms the actual day of serving). The dish was great. I would never have thought preparing the onions and mushrooms separately would have made such a difference. They both added so much flavor to the dish. Never again will I just throw these two items into the pot along with the simmering meat–which is what I have always done. Taking the time to follow her instructions was well worth it. The flavor of the mushrooms was intensified by the cooking them until they “squeak” keeps them from being so soggy and mushy in a dish. Likewise the onions–allowing them to brown and carmelize –gives them a rich sweet flavor.
Julia’s Beef dish is worth the prep. However, it was much more fun to do this with a young friend who was as “game” as I to try and follow the directions. (One of us had to keep reading and re-reading them aloud so that we would remember all the steps. ) Next time, this will be easier. Of course, the consuming of wine may have contributed to our confusion. Give the recipe a chance. It is worth it!
You have no idea what you’re missing by not making the pearl onions as Julia recommends. They have an incredible sweet flavor, and because they are not mixed in with the stew, but prepared separately, their flavor does not marry with the stew, therefore you have an intense, delicious, sweet flavor that compliments the stew. Yes, it is more work, but worth it! So, go to page 483 and make those onions!