Bœuf bourguignon et pommes de terre sautées

I've posted about cooking the French beef stew called Bœuf bourguignon many times over the years. Well, here I go again and I don't have a lot left to say about it — except that it's a French kitchen standard and I like it a lot. Make it with chicken instead of beef and it's called coq au vin. You can also make it with meatballs; it cooks more quickly.

You don't have to make this recipe with Burgundy wine. Any dry red wine will work. You do have to cook the beef for several hours. The stew in this pictures cooked for at least three hours, and it could have cooked longer. While the beef was cooking, I peeled and steamed some potatoes. When were done, I cut them into cubes, and sautéed them in vegetable oil. French fries or pasta would also be good with this kind of stew.

And there you have it. The other ingredients are onions, carrots, mushrooms, and lardons fumés (chunks of smoked pork belly). If you make this with white wine instead of red, it's usually called Bœuf aux carottes. Add an extra carrot or two and you can skip the potatoes. These kinds of stews are sometimes called estouffades — "smothered" meats.