The King of Stews

I have cooked boeuf bourguignon. Once. It was delicious.

David cooks boeuf bourguignon. Regularly. Not just for special occasions. See the difference. He knows what he is doing when he prepares this meal. I think the decision for this to be the next cooking blog went something like this.

David : I haven’t made beef in burgundy yet this win—-

Mike: Yes.

I was in charge of the salad. Next to the main course it is hardly worth mentioning, but I have to make it look like I did something for the meal other than just eat. The salad ingredients are ordinary, but I added a homemade lemon -pepper vinaigrette that hopefully made it worthy of being on the same plate as the beef. This is only the second time I’ve made the vinaigrette and the first time I thought it made the salad too oily.  This time I was feeding more people so I made the same amount of dressing, but I doubled the amount of salad. I think the sweet spot is going to be somewhere in the middle. I liked the subtler flavor, but I hit a few patches of salad that got missed when I tossed it.

Boeuf bourguignon or beef in burgundy (which by the way is a lot easier to pronounce) is the king of beef stews. Calling it stew is sort of like calling a souffle a cake, but it will have to do. Just look at the ingredients: hunks of choice cut beef, bacon, wine, butter, mushrooms, potatoes, and more butter. When we arrived for dinner the house already smelled delicious and the meal was still an hour away. I dropped the ball on appetizers so we had to suffer hungrily as the aroma of the beef wafted around the kitchen. In retrospect I am a genius because the lack of an appetizer meant that I was able to eat more of the beef.

David adds potatoes to his beef in burgundy for some starch. We also had egg noodles which served as a great vehicle for the sauce, but we mostly made these so some of the younger, pickier eaters and vegetarians had something to eat.

After we dished up a plate for everyone I sat down and had a taste of Beef in Burgundy. It was amazing. The pieces of meat melted in your mouth and the potatoes, mushrooms and noodles were coated in the creamy wine sauce. I ate everything on my plate and filled it again. I had way too much, but I didn’t care. By the end everyone’s plate was wiped clean with either noodles of bread. The recipe makes a lot and David taunted me a few days later with stories of leftovers.

And in case I didn’t say it enough that night, Yum.

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