Food You Can Eat: Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon, Adapted

15/12/20 MatthewCrawley 20

I rarely make Julia Child (or Martha Stewart) recipes because they tend to be a little time consuming and can get kind of tricky. But I’ve made a slightly adapted JC Boeuf Bourguignon and since we’re stuck in pandemic-stricken NYC for the holidays I’m going to make this for Christmas. I just hope we don’t have a freakish warm snap because this isn’t fun to eat when it’s 70 degrees outside. This is a pain in the neck but worth it. This recipe makes enough for at least six or eight, that’s why and how I used to make it, but it saves well in the fridge or the freezer for leftovers. It got The Better Half’s Seal of Approval and he wondered why I don’t make it more often. “Do you know how f-ing difficult this is to make? This isn’t Campbell’s Hungry Man beef stew!”

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4 lbs. chuck roast

1/2 lb. fatty bacon

A little olive oil

7 or 8 baby carrots, sliced thick

2 onions, peeled and quartered. Try not to cry as you contemplate how much work you have In front of you.

A little flour

2 BIG bottles of good red wine. Don’t drink it all. You’ll need some for the boeuf bourgingnon. But it makes the process go more pleasurably.

3 cans Campbell’s beef broth. 10.5 ounces each, so 33 ounces. 

Some salt and some pepper

A big head of garlic, diced

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And then:

Little cocktail onions, I think they’re called pearl onions, a bunch of those

Some butter and olive oil to sauté them in

Some more salt and pepper because why not?

Some Campbell’s beef stock, see above

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And then:

1 lb. of smallish mushrooms, but I wouldn’t use button mushrooms. Wash and slice these and have them standing by

More butter and olive oil to sauté them in

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Does this never end? No, it does not. 

You are often meant to serve this over something, If you serve it over rice it becomes something vaguely eastern European. If you serve it over slightly mashed potatoes it becomes vaguely northern European. If you serve it over egg noodles, it becomes again vaguely eastern European, but if you serve it over pappardelle it becomes vaguely Italian. I’ve had it precisely once in France and it was served over nothing, and that made it French, it was served alongside crispy toasted French bread.

I serve it over pappardelle, so:

2 lb. (2 @16 oz.) box of pappardelle

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OK, here we go. 

Before you start, make sure you have seen “Julie and Julia”, or better yet, the abbreviated version on YouTube called “Julia Sans Julie,” which cuts out the dreary Amy Adams contemporary Julie figure and her cloying boyfriend and focuses on Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Stanley Tucci as her husband. 

Cube your 4 pounds of chuck roast. You probably won’t get 4 pounds out of it but do your best. You need a good meat knife for this. Put that aside in a big bowl.

Slice and cut your bacon into smallish strips. It would not surprise me to learn that Julia Child slaughtered her own hogs to make her own bacon but here’s the first shortcut: just pretend you’re making bacon but don’t cook it thoroughly. Lift it out of the skillet with tongs or a fork or whatever, and put it aside. Now take the beef and brown it in the bacon fat. You’ll probably have to do this in batches if you’re making 4 lbs. of it. Now you take that and put it aside in another bowl.

Preheat an oven to 450 degrees. This is why this is no fun to make or consume during a heat wave.

You’ve got some bacon fat left and beef juices at this point so throw the sliced carrots and cubed onions in your skillet. 

This doesn’t sound so bad, Cousin Matthew? Oh, just you wait.

In an uncovered oven-proof casserole dish add all of this, and don’t forget the bacon, as I once did. Julia would have done more of this in the casserole dish already. Sprinkle in some salt and pepper, the garlic, and the flour, stir, and put it in the oven for precisely four minutes. Take it out, stir again, and return it to the oven for precisely four minutes. With something like this I don’t mess with Julia Child.

Now, you take the dish out of the oven and turn the heat down to 325 degrees. I’m telling you, this is a huge pain in the ass, but worth it. To take your mind off things, remember when Jane Lynch shows up as Meryl Streep’s/Julia Child’s sister Dorothy. 

Put the casserole dish back on the stovetop and make it simmer for a minute or two. Pour in an entire bottle (750 ml) of a good red wine. To be kind of authentic use a Burgundy. Bourguignon, right? Add two cans of beef stock. You should have enough beef that you’re not drowning this and making a soup out it. Kind of keep your eye on this and make sure you don’t liquify the thing.

Cover the casserole dish and put it back in your oven, now cooled to 325 degrees, for about three hours, maybe a little more. It should kind of simmer, even though it’s in the oven. This would be so much easier with a crockpot or an insta-pot but it’s always 1961 in my house, it seems.

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Are we done, Cousin Matthew?

Oh, hell no. 

Take a break and pop open another bottle of burgundy. Here are three more things to do, but they’re easy. At about the two-hour mark or even a little later sauté your mini onions and keep them warm. Use some beef stock, Julia did, just a good splash. Then do the mushrooms in the same skillet you used for the onions. Then boil a big pot of pasta. Sorry if I’m being a little vague but I’ve only done this for and with a crowd of observers. 

You now take the beef out of the oven and you’ll see that there’s quite a bit of liquid. At this point you’re giving in to despair but will remember that Julia Child was doing this in the 1950s and you once saw her Cambridge, MA, kitchen reconstituted in one of the Smithsonian museums on that weird trip to Washington where your husband had to testify before a House sub-committee but in an informational way, not something that could get him indicted. 

Pour/spoon out as much of the boeuf bourguignon liquid as you can and put it back in the skillet. Add some flour to it and make a roux. Stir it around on low heat for a few minutes. This recipe is such a pain in the ass.

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But now you’re done. FINALLY. To serve, put a proportionate amount of the pasta in large individual serving bowls, scoop out the boeuf bourguignon, add the onions and the mushrooms, and top with the roux. 

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20 Comments

    • Oh just you wait. I’m gearing up to compose a post on how to make a meat-based bolognese sauce that can take four hours if done properly, but it’s very passive. You just look in on it every so often, sample, add something you think is lacking, and leave it alone until your next pass by. Yes, I have no life. Well, I do, but it’s one lived by an Italian grandmother from the earlier part of the 20th century.

  2. Let me be the first to comment. There’s another backstory if you’ll indulge me. Many years ago we were in our 20s and living in a slummy rent-stabilized apartment. My now-husband had just joined me in my Shangri-La the previous summer. That winter was fairly brutal, tons of snow, which is rare for NYC, so we decided to stay in situ and have Christmas together. That Man finagled a transfer to NYC from Boston, where he was living, and Boston got it even worse. His office had tons of Boston ex-pats similarly stranded so, without consulting me, he invited them over for Christmas Day dinner. 
     
    “What am I supposed to feed these people whom I’ve never met?” 
     
    “Make that beef that you made for me last winter.” Hmmm. He was referring to another Julia Child recipe but I dug out the cookbook and made this instead. It was a big hit but what I most remember is trudging, “Dr. Zhivago”-like, along snowy Manhattan streets with That Man and laughing at how absurd this all was and collecting what I needed.
     
    We’re a well-matched pair and being confined to solitary because of the pandemic holds no surprises for us. I should remember which Christmas this was because a couple of weeks earlier I had come home and the door to the living room was closed. “Don’t go in there yet. I got you a Christmas present.” “Well, that’s fine, put it under the tree and I’ll pretend that you wrapped it.” “Ummm, I can’t really wrap it, so–here, be quiet.” Under the tree was a little terrier puppy completely passed out in a Christmas box from one of the department stores lined with a blanket. “I was waiting for her to come to and start barking and that would be the surprise.” Best Christmas ever. 

  4. julia child looks delicious in that pot
    sounds a bit labour intensive tho
    welp..ive got spare time coming up…i can do this
    does it need to be julia child or will any passerby i can snag do?

  5. I do this one every so often & LOVE it!!….
     
    it’s FUTZY, but not “hard” if that makes sense?
     
    The only things I switch up are that I use Salt Pork, rather than bacon–because although this is an “abridged” version, Julia talks about boiling the bacon before frying to get rid of the “smoked” flavors**–and it’s just EASIER, imo, to use Salt Pork from the get-go, instead.
     
    Also, with the pearl onions–USE THE FROZEN KIND!!!
    It’s so much easier, than trying to peel those tiny damn things (although if you ARE starting with fresh ones,for God’s sake, USE her “cut off the ends, make an ‘X’ in the bottom, and boil ’em for a couple minutes” method…. DO NOT try to peel them like regular onions–you WILL cry!!!–Not because of burning eyes, just from the sheer FRUSTRATION of trying to peel those tiny little buggers!!!!😱😱😱)
     
    Once you’ve made this a time or two–and ESPECIALLY if you’ve made any other Julia recipes, you realize the woman was a goddamned GENUIS, and you also understand WHY our mothers & grandmothers looooooved her recipes.😉😃😁
     
    They’re damn-near foolproof, and while they might take literally hours to make, they aren’t the sort of things that take *active*  hours in the kitchen…
    There are short bursts of *active cooking,* but most of it is just time to chop things, prep stuff, or to do OTHER things around the house….
    Her recipes were amazingly easy for the average housewife/stay-at-home mom to wow a family’s tastebuds with, without making her spend every moment in the kitchen, watching pots & pans…
     
    And in the era when there WEREN’T all the pre-made/pre-packaged things we HAVE nowadays, this would have been tasty, hearty, filling, and extremely satisfying🥰🤗😉
     
     
    (**for unknown/inexplicable reasons–i LOVE bacon!, I just LOATHE the flavor of smoked pork products with beef–including/especially bacon cheeseburgers🙃, and the regular bacon gets too reminiscent of that combo.)

    • Also, button mushrooms DO/can work juuuuust fine–that’s the easiest type to get here, and it works with both the pre-sliced fresh ones, and the kind you cut yourself.
      at our house, we ALL like mushrooms, so the “1 lb is more of a…. recommendation, as is the quantity of pearl onions (i use two bags of the frozen ones, now😉)

  6. Julia Child was a delight to watch, but I’ve never made any of her recipes and don’t plan to. Not least because I’m pretty sure none of them are vegetarian. 
     
    Can I ask an off topic question? Where are you from? I feel like I had an impression that you were from the UK but I don’t know if that was based on nothing, or maybe based on your handle haha. Now I’m gathering that you’re a New Yorker? 

    • It makes a good 8 servings but it makes for great leftovers. Since you’re putting so much time and effort into it you might as well make a lot and freeze. It doesn’t really go any more quickly if you halve or quarter the recipe.

  8. Wait, no cognac? The pearl onions must be caramelized in butter with a touch of sugar, then add cognac, if you have a gas stove, jiggle it over the flame so the cognac catches fire, burn off the alcohol then add it all to the pot. I guess with an electric stove you have to use a long reach fire stick thingy?
    I make this every solstice, in a crock pot with as many kinds of mushrooms as I can find. This year I’m serving it with roasted root vegetables. It’s so good, but I don’t do it Julia’s way, I do a hybrid Craig Claiborne sort of thing.
     

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