Pot Roast Bourguignonne – But Never Say It

How is this different from pot roast, she asked. She had a point. My elegant Boeuf Bourguignonne, based on the classic beef stew immortalized by Julia Child, is a beef stew but deconstructed is nothing but a pot roast.

In short, my daughter made the simple observation that the emperor has no clothes. But that wouldn’t be entirely true either. While this recipe makes a delicious stew, it could be easily adapted to make a magnificent pot roast. The recipe elevates a cheap cut of beef, in the case of my stew two chuck steaks or in the case of a pot roast a chuck roast, into an honest dish where the sum of the parts elevates a peasant meal into the lofty culinary atmosphere of haute cuisine.

Day One: A Costly Cup of Broth

It starts with an honest, rich homemade beef stock. For a cup and a half mine started with two beef shanks cut about ¾ of an inch thick and each weighing about a pound. These were browned in a 350^o oven for an hour, cut up and put in the smallest sauce pan I own that would contain them. They were then covered with a blasé boxed salt free beef broth, brought to a boil and then reduced slow rolling simmer for about five hours. I added water from time to time to keep them covered in liquid.

When the marrow separates from the shank bones, after about an hour, remove and reserve and refrigerate. This will be used to finish the sauce as with a Bordelaise sauce. Return the shank bones to the stock pot.

After a slow rolling boil the meat will have reduced to mush. This broth will be rich in natural beefy gelatin rendered from the connective tissue in the shanks. And after refrigeration this stock will be stiffer than any Jell-O brand gelatin. And it is the only foundation for magnificent beef sauces. But it’s not an everyday affair. Perfection isn’t everyday thing either. Every day, we settle for mostly it will do.

In Boeuf Bourguignonne a rich stock is crucial. It’s half of the braising liquid. The other half is dry red wine. If the broth is weak the resulting sauce will have will have certain nasty skid row qualities that scream of too much cheap wine.

Six hours prep time and nearly $8 for the shanks to yield 1 and ½ or two cups of broth is too time consuming and costly for everyday home cooking.

Yet for turning everyday peasant dishes – stews, braised pot roasts, briskets short ribs, ox tails and even magnificent meat loafs or even hamburgers – into haute cuisine it is the cornerstone. And oddly these dishes have become swank menu items at pricy restaurants. It starts with the broth.

Some home cooks will make a larger batch of this condensed broth and freeze it in ice cube trays for later use. I do not. My freezer in time tends to become hodgepodge of mysteries.

Day Two

So much for the broth, we can now proceed to the stew itself or the pot roast, if that’s how you prefer to present it.

For this you will need the aforementioned two to two and one half pound of chuck stew meat or a roast and with that:

½ pound Bacon thick sliced in ½” dice

½ pound of sliced Mushroom

(Shitake are nice and at this point I’ve already spent nearly $10 and a half a day on two cups of broth so what’s another buck or so for mushrooms.)

½ pound of pearl onions

½ pound of baby carrots

Olive oil and butter for sauté

Three cloves of garlic minced

1 bay leaf

1 tsp thyme

1 ½ -2 cups of rich beef broth & and equal amount of decent dry red wine

(a $9 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon is good enough, a $5 discounted decent bottle is better.)

Flour for whitewash to thicken the sauce

To make the stew or a pot roast for that matter is a three or four step process. In a deep 12” skillet fry the diced bacon in a little olive oil. Remove the browned bacon to a couple of layers of paper towels to drain. In the same pan brown on all sides the stew meat (in batches) or chuck roast. Drain the pan of excess oil and bacon fat. Return the meat to the skillet including the bacon. Nearly cover with a 50/50 mix of wine and beef broth, add the bay leaf, minced garlic, one onion in quarters and one large carrot cut into large chunks. Bring this to a boil, cover and bake in a 300^o oven for two to two and one half hours until the meat is fork tender. Add water as necessary.

While the beef is slow cooking, gently sauté the pearl onions in butter to brown but with care not to cook into mush, boil the baby carrots until el dente. (I wouldn’t object if the carrots were caramelized some in a 500^o oven with butter instead.)

To finish the dish remove the meat from the braising liquid, remove the sacrificial onion and carrot chunks. Discard those. They have given up their flavor. Add the diced bone marrow. Add the thyme then bring the liquid to a boil and thicken with a flour white wash so that it coats the bottom side of a spoon. Then add the pearl onions and carrots. Should it be a stew, add the stew meat. If pot roast, slice and serve generously serve the vegetables and sauce on top, with either oven browned potatoes or noodles to beautifully finish the plate.

Now, this is the big deal. Should this be served at a small diner party leave any pretentious mention of Bourguignonne out of it. Whether presented as a stew or a pot roast, simply say I’ve made a stew or simple post. Leave the meal speak for itself and enjoy the culinary pleasure of your guests. And after the complements say, oh it was really nothing.