Beef Bourguignon

Boeuf Bourguignon is a well-known French beef stew with red wine. The meat is braised in red Burgundy with mushrooms, onions, and bacon. Officially, it's a French peasant dish. The meat needs to be braised for a long time to be tender. Because it requires a long braising time, I wanted to try preparing it sous vide.

Sous vide cooking makes the meat incredibly tender and prevents it from drying out. I was curious to see how the sauce would fare if I cooked the dish sous vide. Curious about the result? The meat was indeed very tender, and the sauce was fantastic. Read Cees Knijnsberg's recipe below!

Author	explorer4experience.com
People	4
Temperature	74
Cooking time	24 hours
Prep time	45 minutes

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg beef steak or sukade
• 3 carrots
• 3 stalks of celery
• 150 g pancetta
• 1 bottle of red wine (burgundy)
• 3 onions
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 bay leaves
• flat-leaf parsley
• peppercorns
• 400 g veal stock
• ghee or butter
• 5 sprigs of thyme
• salt and pepper
• mushrooms
• silver onions (optional)

Preparation

Preparation

Pat the meat dry and season with salt and pepper. Melt ghee in the pan and sear the meat in whole chunks to reduce juice loss. I got this tip from a good friend. Sear the meat for 2-3 minutes per side to brown it. After searing, set the meat aside to cool.

Pancetta

Slice the pancetta and sauté it in the same pan as the meat. Trim and dice the carrot and celery, then sauté them with the pancetta. Peel and finely chop the onions and add them. Finally, add the garlic. Stir until everything is combined.

Vegetables

Once the vegetables have browned slightly, add the red wine. Stir with a wooden spoon around the bottom of the pan to loosen any residue. Reduce the wine slightly and then add the veal stock. Add the thyme, parsley, peppercorns, and bay leaves and let the sauce reduce.

Sauce

Cut the meat into chunks and add them to the reduced sauce. The meat will release some of its juices as you cut it. Some juices will also be released as it cools. Don't throw this away! Add the meat juices to the sauce. Stir everything well.

Sous vide

Let the meat/sauce cool slightly. Vacuum-seal the mixture. I use between 400 and 600 grams for two people. Based on the steps above, there's enough for three bags. Bring the water to 74°C and then place the vacuum-sealed meat in the water for 24 hours.

Serve

Sauté the mushrooms with a chopped onion (and the silverskin onions) until golden brown. Cut open a bag of beef bourguignon and pour the liquid into a pan. Check if the liquid/sauce needs thickening. If it needs thickening, use butter and flour. Then combine 25 grams of melted butter with 25 grams of flour in a bowl. Stir the flour and butter into the sauce until it thickens. Bring to a boil.

Complete

This sauce doesn't need to be thickened. Add the meat and mushrooms to the sauce and heat through. Don't let the meat boil. Serve with potatoes or rice. Serve with a red Burgundy.

Save

If you're not eating everything immediately, follow these steps: Remove the bags of boeuf bourguignon from the sous vide water. Place them in ice water to cool immediately. Allow the boeuf bourguignon to cool within a few minutes and then place it in the freezer.

If you want to eat it, you can take a bag from the freezer and heat it up in the sous vide at 74°C for 2 hours.

Use these products

[product=sous-vide-bak-met-lid]
Handy for this recipe
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[product=ivide-circulator-stick-2-0]
Perfect for this recipe!
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[product=vacuum bags]
Suitable for sous vide cooking
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