Beef Stewguignon

I dove into the glorious world of beef bourguignon about six years ago, and followed the instructions carefully and attentively about three times. I loved it, but after making beef stew a few times after that I decided it was time for a marriage of the two. So all these years later, it's more likely you'll find a combo of both of these delicious dinners in my kitchen, rather than one or the other.

Bourguignon calls for an entire bottle of red wine, which is one of the main reasons I love the recipe. I will never deny this dish of the wine. However, the recipe for bourguignon is a little too fussy, and calls for bacon. Not that I have anything wrong with bacon, but in this dish I don't think it adds enough flavor to be worth the extra calories. And then there's beef stew, which falls a little flat for me. Mix the two recipes together, and you check all of the boxes.

You want your meat to be fork tender, so make this dish a few hours before dinner time.

Beef Stewguignon

serves 4

1 lb. beef stew meat (mine was actually 1.33 lbs, no big deal)

1 bottle of red wine

1 tbsp. olive oil

6 shallots (peeled and halved) or pearl onions

1 head of garlic (peeled and halved)

2 carrots 

1 large potatoes

1/2 bunch of celery

1 cup of beef stock

fresh thyme
salt
pepper

1) Prep your vegetables, dry your stew meat in paper towels, and season the meat with salt and pepper. You want to make the veggies roughly the same size to ensure similar cooking times.


2) Get the olive oil hot in your pan. Sear the meat on all sides and remove from the pan.

3) Sauté shallots or onions, and garlic *watch garlic closely, it burns if you're not stirring it. 

4) Add carrots, celery, and potatoes to the pan for a few minutes.

5) Then add the seared pieces of stew meat back to the pan, an entire bottle of wine, cup of beef stock, and fresh thyme. 

6) Then cover and cook at 300 degrees in the oven for at least 3 hours. I taste the stew at the end to make sure the flavor is right, I usually add a splash of red wine vinegar, salt and pepper too.