The release of the movie Julie and Julia brought about a renewed sense of interest in a classic French dish called boeuf bourguignon. Now, I understand that the first response is to be overwhelmed. After all, this is a very French name for what the movie played up to be a fussy, difficult dish to prepare. The reality is actually quite different, and boeuf bourguignon is an easy, tasty dish that anyone can prepare at home.
So, what exactly is boeuf bourguignon and how did it come about? The first thing that we need to do is get past the fancy name. Boeuf bourguignon is just another way of saying Beef Burgundy, named after the main ingredient (beef) and the region of France where it was first developed (Burgundy). When it was first created, it was not a fancy dish at all; in reality, it was a simple peasant dish meant to help poor farmers survive the lean winter months.
Let’s take a look at the main ingredients that go into beef bourguignon. Onions and carrots were cheap and stored easily in the winter, as did bacon because most people at the time raised pigs. The best beef for this recipe is a tough stew beef that was usually left over after all the tender cuts of the animal were sold. It was also common to use older plow oxen who were no longer able to work and whose meat had grown tough with age. Wine was common, and Burgundy was the local wine of the region. The wine was used because this type of meat needed to be cooked for a very long time in order to be tender, and wine, being acidic, was thought to help with the tenderizing process.
All in all, this dish was very cheap to make. If you think this sounds pretty much exactly like a typical beef stew recipe, you would be correct. It wasn’t until years later when peasant dishes were being rediscovered and remade into fancy cuisine that boeuf bourguignon took on the air of sophistication that has remained to this day, despite efforts by Julia Child with the beef bourguignon recipe she published in her first book, among other prominent chefs, to take what was originally a simple, common dish and return it to the masses from which it came.
This guest post is courtesy of the website ‘Chicken and Apples’, which you can find here.
