Serves 6
Prep 30 min
Cook 3 hrs
Total 3.5 hrs
Level Patient
Boeuf bourguignon is Julia Child’s most famous recipe, a French peasant dish elevated by time and wine into something that tastes like the best possible version of itself. It is beef braised in an entire bottle of red wine with bacon, mushrooms, pearl onions, and herbs until the meat is so tender it gives way at the suggestion of a fork and the sauce has reduced to something dark, glossy, and deeply complex.
It takes three hours. The active work is perhaps forty minutes. The rest is the oven doing everything while your kitchen fills with a smell that makes people ask what you are cooking before they have even taken their coat off. Make it the day before — it is substantially better reheated the next day, and it means you can enjoy dinner instead of finishing the sauce while guests are at the table.
Ingredients
1 kg beef chuck, cut into 5cm cubes
750 ml full bottle Burgundy or Pinot Noir
200 g lardons or bacon cut into strips
300 g pearl onions or shallots, peeled
300 g chestnut mushrooms, quartered
3 carrots, cut into thick rounds
4 cloves garlic, smashed
2 tbsp tomato paste
300 ml beef stock
2 tbsp plain flour
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp butter + 2 tbsp oil
On the wine: Use something you would actually drink — not a great wine, but not cooking wine either. A bottle of Burgundy is traditional and ideal; a good Pinot Noir or Côtes du Rhône works equally well. The wine is the sauce, so its quality matters. A rough rule: if you would not pour it in a glass willingly, do not cook with it.
Instructions
Brown the bacon, set aside. In a large oven-safe casserole, fry the lardons over medium heat until golden and the fat has rendered. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Leave the fat in the pan.
Brown the beef in batches — properly. Pat the beef completely dry and season generously. Brown in the bacon fat in batches over high heat, 2–3 minutes per side, until deeply coloured on all sides. Do not crowd the pan. This step builds the entire flavour base of the sauce. Set aside with the bacon.
Soften aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add the carrots and garlic to the same pan and cook 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and flour, coating everything. Cook 2 more minutes until the paste darkens slightly.
Deglaze and braise. Pour in the entire bottle of wine, scraping up all the browned bits. Add the stock, thyme, bay leaves, browned beef, and bacon. The liquid should nearly cover the meat. Bring to a simmer, cover with a lid, and transfer to a 160°C oven. Cook for 2 hours 30 minutes to 3 hours until the beef is completely tender.
Cook the mushrooms and onions separately. About 30 minutes before the braise finishes, cook the pearl onions in butter until golden. In a separate pan, sauté the mushrooms over high heat until deeply browned. Season both well.
Finish the sauce. Remove the beef. Strain the braising liquid into a wide saucepan and simmer rapidly for 10–15 minutes until reduced to a glossy, lightly coating sauce. Taste and adjust seasoning. Return the beef, add the mushrooms and onions, heat through gently. Remove thyme and bay leaves.
🍷Make it the night before. Reheat gently on the stove, adding a splash of stock if the sauce has thickened too much. The flavours meld overnight into something noticeably better than on the day it was made.
🥔Serve over mashed potato — lots of butter, warmed cream, seasoned generously. The sauce soaks into the potato in the best possible way. Egg noodles and crusty bread are equally good.
The meal that earns its reputation
There is no shortcut to boeuf bourguignon. The three hours in the oven are the recipe. What they produce is a dish with a depth of flavour that is impossible to achieve any other way — the wine reducing and concentrating around the collagen from the beef, the mushrooms and onions absorbing everything. It is the definition of a dish greater than its parts, and it rewards the cook who respects the process.
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