Beef Bourguignon Slow Cooked

Before you start cooking your stew, you want an appropriate cut of beef. More specifically, you want one that’s rich in connective tissue made of collagen. Gelatin that makes the meat still seem moist even after the muscle fibers have inevitably dried out from long cooking.

A boneless chuck roll, which comes from the cow’s incredibly strong shoulder, is perfect for stewing, and it tends to be pretty cheap. You have other options, such as shank beef. Dice the beef into big chunks first, then brown them on all sides. That browning helps develop flavor. A lot of beef stew recipes, including ones for boeuf Bourguignon, say that for the best flavor, you should marinate the beef first. I don’t suggest marination if you use Dutch oven or sloww cook. Marination is best before grilling or toasting the meat, but here we slow cook on low temperature and get a tender, juicy stew. With stew, the meat spends enough time in the pot with the stewing liquid that it ends up taking on as much flavor as meat that was marinated first. 

Once the beef is browned, the next step is to brown the aromatics. Brown large pieces of aromatic vegetables, like halved carrots, onions, and crushed cloves of garlic, and cook those in the stew along with an herb bundle tied together with cooking twine if you use fresh herbs. Add starches like flour to thicken them up to the point of being like gravy and bown it only few mintes.

Side note on the wine: cooking with wine, red and white, very important is to find out the quality of it. In fact, even the oft-repeated instruction to „only cook with wine that you’d be willing to drink” but important to mention don’t use sweet or dessert wine to cook meats! There are really only two important rules. First, don’t cook with a „cooking wine” or, worse, a wine product that is not actually wine. Second, use a dry wine unless the recipe specifically calls for an off-dry one. Dryness in wine refers to its sweetness. In most recipes, beef Bourguignon being one of them, a dry wine is essential. Any sugar in it will do very strange things to the flavor of the stew.