Sunday Beef Bourguignon with Buttered Noodles
3 h · Hard
#comfort#french#stew#weekend
The Sunday project that pays you back all week. Beef shin goes into red wine tough and comes out three hours later collapsing under a spoon, in a sauce dark enough to stain the bread. Put it on at lunchtime, forget about it, and let the house do the advertising.
Ingredientsfor 4 portions
- 700 g Beef Shank, Raw, beef shin, cut into large chunks
- 100 g Bacon, Raw, cut into lardons
- 400 ml Red Wine, something dry you would drink
- 500 ml Beef Bone Broth
- 3 medium Carrots, cut into thick rounds
- 2 medium Yellow Onion, roughly chopped
- 3 clove Garlic, crushed
- 300 g Mushrooms, halved
- 2 tbsp Tomato Paste
- 30 g All-Purpose Flour
- 1 tbsp Thyme
- 2 leaf Bay Leaves
- 30 g Unsalted Butter
- 240 g Egg Noodles
- 1.5 tsp Sea Salt
- 1 tsp Black Pepper
- 15 g Parsley, chopped, to finish
Steps
- Heat the oven to 150 °C. Pat the beef completely dry with kitchen paper and season it hard with salt and pepper. Wet meat steams instead of browning, and the browning is where the whole flavour of this dish begins.
- Render the lardons in a heavy casserole over medium heat for 5–6 minutes until crisp and the fat has run out. Lift them out with a slotted spoon and leave the fat behind.
- Brown the beef in that fat in batches, 4–5 minutes a side, until each piece has a deep mahogany crust. Take your time and don't crowd the pan — this is the single most important step. Set the beef aside.
- Add the onions and carrots to the pot and cook for 6–8 minutes until softened and taking colour, then stir in the garlic and tomato paste and cook for another minute until it darkens.
- Sprinkle the flour over and stir for a minute, then pour in the wine, scraping hard at the base of the pot to lift every last brown scrap into the sauce — that fond is pure concentrated flavour.
- Return the beef and lardons, pour in the broth, add the thyme and bay leaves and bring to a bare simmer. The liquid should just cover the meat.
- Lid on, into the oven for 2½ hours. Don't stir or peek more than once — it needs steady, undisturbed heat to break the connective tissue down into silk.
- In the last 20 minutes, fry the mushrooms in half the butter over high heat until golden and squeaky, then stir them through the stew. Adding them late keeps them meaty instead of soggy.
- Cook the egg noodles in well-salted water, drain and toss with the remaining butter. Serve the bourguignon over the noodles with a heavy scatter of parsley.
