14 December 2013

Bœuf braisé aux carottes

Bœuf aux carottes is a classic French dish, I think, but I've found the recipe under that name in only one of my 8 or 10 French cookbooks. There seem to be quite a few other names for the same thing. Simply bœuf braisé, it being understood that carrots and onions will be in the pot with the meat. Or bœuf mode. Even bœuf à la mode (no, no ice cream with it).


Braising used to be done in a fireplace, with a special cooking pot called a braisière set right on top of the fire's glowing embers. The braisière had a tight-fitting lid with a rim around it so that you could put some of the glowing embers on top to turn it into a kind of oven. Nowadays, we cook things like bœuf aux carottes or bœuf bourguignon on top of the stove or in our oven.


To braise meat or vegetables, first you brown the main ingredients in what is called un corps gras — butter, oil, duck fat, or lard. That's called faire revenir la viande or faire revenir les légumes — to "bring them back", as Walt pointed out on his blog a few days ago. I've been thinking about that expression, and I think it means that browning is a way of bringing food back to life. The meat or vegetable was alive and then it was dead and maybe not very appetizing. Browning it in the corps gras turns it into something appetizing again. Does anybody have a better theory?


Here's how you make bœuf braisé aux carottes. Like so much of the good food in France, it's not so much a recipe as a method. As I said, first, on fait revenir des oignons, des lardons, et des morceaux de bœuf. Start by browning 2 or 3 sliced onions with a hundred grams (3 or 4 ounces) of diced bacon or ham in a stew pot. I like to use a high-sided pot so the cooking fat doesn't spatter everything in the kitchen. You can also include 3 or 4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled, for more flavor.


When the onions and bacon are lightly browned, take them out and into the same pot put 2 to 2½ lbs. (un kilo) of beef cut into big chunks. Chuck roast is a good choice. It doesn't have to be the tenderest beef, but you want it to be tasty. Have the pot very hot, put the beef chunks into it in a single layer without crowding things too much, and let them brown really well on one side. Then turn them over and brown them on another side. Finally, just start stirring them around so that they brown more or less all over. You shouldn't have any or much liquid in the pot at all during the browning.


Now add the onions and bacon back into the pot and stir everything around again. Pour on enough white wine — red wine would turn the braise into a bœuf bourguignon instead of a bœuf mode — and stock or water to just cover the ingredients. Add salt and pepper at this point, along with some thyme, bay leaves, and maybe a little ground cloves or allspice. If you want a nice brown sauce, add a tablespoon of tomato paste, but don't overdo it. I added some dried shitake mushrooms and some green leek tops to my stew. The leek tops are just for flavor; leave them in big pieces so you can take them out of the stew at the end of the cooking time.


Let the beef and aromatic ingredients cook at a low simmer for at least an hour. Taste the sauce for flavor and seasonings, and add some more wine, water, or stock as you think necessary to keep the meat just barely covered. Meanwhile, peel and cut up half a dozen carrots weighing 1 to 1½ lbs. Add them to the pot and push them down into the liquid, again adding more liquid as needed. The carrots need to cook slowly for a long time and they will lend their vegetable sweetness to the meat. Let the pot continue to simmer for an hour or even two hours longer on a very low flame.


I think that's it. You can put some potatoes into the pot for the last 30 or so minutes of the cooking time if you want to eat the bœuf aux carottes with potatoes. Or, separately, you can cook some rice or pasta to have with it. It needs a green salad too, either before or after you eat the main course. Bon appétit and happy cooking.

14 comments:

  1. As always, it looks so good!

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  2. Boiled beef and carrots...
    boiled beef and carrots...
    goes the song!

    Just the food on a damp, misty morning like today...
    good, tasty, comfort food...
    We had s-s-s-similar scran last night...
    cold beef reheated with onions, carrots and peas in a thick pumpkin and Bovril gravy....
    and served with colcannon!!!

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  3. :-) Starman.

    Tim, boiling really isn't the same as braising. Pot-au feu is boiled, this is not.

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  4. The sauce looks so savory and scrumptious. I'll bet it smelled great in the house, too.

    I've often thought about the revenir thing, too... trying to come up with a good explanation to help my students remember the word for this meaning. I can't think of a better explanation than yours, so let's go with it. ;)

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  5. I agree that this is a technique vs. a recipe. I have many versions that I make often. My favorite is onions, mushrooms and beef, deglaze the pan with beer instead of wine and add a spoonful of good dijon. I think that is carbonnade...but I'm not sure. Sometimes adding sour cream at the end gives it a stoganoff twist. I love making these make ahead meals. It makes dinner time so easy and leftovers are nice to have too! Enjoy!

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  6. I've been using "paleron" for brisket; it's delicious. So, instead of cutting up the beef into chunks, I braise a whole big piece. Of course, once it is well cooked, it almost melts when you take a fork to it. And the leftover juices (if there is such a thing) make a great base for onion soup. All these stick-to-your-ribs winter meals. We had pot-au-feu yesterday.

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  7. I think your explanation about "revenir" is right on :
    http://www.expressio.fr/expressions/faire-revenir-une-viande-un-aliment.php

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  8. Un régal pour les yeux… et sans doute aussi, pour les papilles :-)

    You could also prepare this the way many French cooks do: By using your old trusted SEB "cocotte-minute," (pressure cooker.) It would be done in half the time… but equally delicious… and even better, once reheated, the next day :-)

    PS: I know, I know… I am missing the point! -- Veronique (French Girl in Seattle)

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  9. You got some good meat there! Sometimes when you try to brown meat, so much water comes out of it, it just goes grey as it starts to boil. I don't like paying 29€ the kilo for water. We have a very good butcher in the village, thank goodness.

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  10. Ken, I have read your method again and again and again....
    and that is how my Mum and my Gran both did "Boiled Beef and Carrots"...
    and it was started in the morning...
    and by lunchtime you'd be drooling at the smells coming from the kitchen.

    Just miss out the wine!!
    Wine was for drinking...

    Dark meat was never cooked by boiling alone, that was for ham hocks and the like.

    I can't ever remember having fowl boiled... as in an "old boiling fowl" dish...
    fowl was always open roast...

    We had a good lunch today
    that has nothing to do with this comment...
    I'm just reminding myself that I have eaten well today...
    'cos I'm drooling at the thought of all this scrummy food!!


    ... in the oven, occasionally resting on carrot and parsnip trimmings and a couple of shallots/small onions. Mum made her gravy with what was in the roasting pan...

    Aaaagh! I can't go on....

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  11. What a dish! Just like my Mom's! I can taste it now. She always added a little wine, and made sure she got all those beef bits into the sauce/gravy. Miam, miam.

    Merci, Ken, for your explanation about revenir - to bring back the vegetables makes sense to me,now.

    The warm rains came, the snow has melted and yesterday I got to drive down the hill and back to civilization in time for my first Bridge Tournament! Hooray for 37 deg.!
    Mary in Oregon

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  12. Lynn, I don't think I've ever made a carbonade flamande, but what you describe sounds exactly like that. I'll have to try it one day.

    Pauline, I hate it when meat that you are browning releases a lot of water. I think keeping the temperature really high is the trick, so that any water excuded evaporates immediately.

    Mary, glad to hear you can now fight against cabin fever. It sounds like your mother was a good cook.

    Tim, some French cooking experts might say that one of the deficiencies of our Anglo-Saxon culinary traditions is that we don't recognize the differences between techniques like boiling and braising. Also, we often put way too many ingredients in a dish so that we end up not being able to appreciate the individual tastes. About boiling fowl, well, it depends in part on whether you are cooking a stewing hen or a young chicken. Even with a young bird, poaching (not really boiling) is a fine technique.

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  13. Ken, I think Pauline was refering mainly to the UK supermarket meat we used to buy...
    all our small butchers having shut up shop because people stopped using them as they were "too expensive"...
    UK supermarket meat...
    of all types..
    often has water injected under pressure - up to 20% is allowed...
    once Leeds' Farmers' Market started, we used to get all our main meat from there...
    local sourced pork [Gloucester Old Spot and Saddleback]...
    beef from the Highland Cow man.
    Chooks from three different rearers
    and none of the meat injected...
    yes it was "more expensive"...
    but, a big but...
    it went almost twice as far...
    making it cheaper!!
    Every now and then we'd run out and buy meat from the supermarket...
    and, every time, swear not to do it again!!

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  14. In response to my comment, you wrote:
    "some French cooking experts might say that one of the deficiencies of our Anglo-Saxon culinary traditions is that we don't recognize the differences between techniques like boiling and braising. Also, we often put way too many ingredients in a dish so that we end up not being able to appreciate the individual tastes."...
    I think they got that just about spot on!!
    Quite often, when making a one-pot meal...
    I add cooked veg at the end to warm through...
    so that they keep their taste against the gravy that they are in...
    and remain a bit more al-dentist...
    much nicer!!

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