Beef Bourguignon
This recipe I had to make due to name by Grandmother (Gran) gave it, she calls it "beef bugger off." Besides the colourful name this dish had a lot of potential, starting off with bacon, and anything that starts with bacon is amazing. There were other ingredients besides that bacon, turns out beef bourguignon is just a fancy name for a pretty standard beef stew that is flavoured with red wine.

The recipe, from the Joy of Cooking, starts off with a marinade for the stewing beef, based on red wine and some of the usual suspects for stew making (carrots, onions etc). Thyme and parsley add a little bit of green to the party and subtle flavour. The wine doesn't really need to be anything fancy just I bought a $10 bottle from Loblaws. I didn't care for it much to drink but its flavour was considerably mellowed out in the stew. After marinading the beef overnight in the fridge, brown the bacon, then brown the other ingredients in the bacon fat, pour in the red wine marinade and slap a lid on it. In an hour or so throw in some mushrooms and parsley and wait another half an hour or so. Your patience will be rewarded, trust me.

I don't really have anything negative to say about this recipe it turned out great! A nice hearty stew with a very nice body and mouth feel. I like my stews pretty thick so I added a little corn starch slurry to thicken it up a little more but other than that I hardly deviated for the recipe. The only thing now is what am I going to do with all of this left over parsley?

Stew in a dutch oven

The wine I used