Holy crap, I can’t wait. Our house smells like braising beef in a nice pinot noir.
Looks like it takes about 3 hours from start to finish.
I’ll provide updates later.
(after watching Julie & Julia, my wife decided that she wants to cook some of Julia Child’s meals – I am not complaining)
That’s hilarious - I’m making it too. 
I just finished the onions and mushrooms, it’s about an hour until it comes out of the oven and then I’ll just have to reduce the sauce. I do a periodicals blog for the library, and I thought I could do a good post on that Slate article there’s a thread about, and how it most certainly isn’t difficult, just time consuming and exacting - I’m taking pictures and such. So I can pretend I just spent three hours in the kitchen for work.
The thing is, my parents are coming over to eat it, and I now have to clean up at least two rooms of my incredibly messy house, reduce the sauce, and take a shower in the next 3 hours. (Oh, and roast some potatoes.)
I’m a little worried I let it cook too hot - it was boiling, not simmering, when I checked it at 2.5 hours. Seems done. How’s the wife’s version, Dudley?
It was delicious. Everything just melted in our mouths. She served it with smallish roasted potatoes as well, and she made fresh French bread to sop up all the broth.
She didn’t use the Julia Child recipe (adding beef broth and adding the flour at the beginning of the braising), but one she found on-line that’s more in line with the traditional French recipe. Which did you use? How did yours come out?
I did the Mastering the Art of French Cooking one, because there have been a lot of news articles about the book and its newfound popularity and if anybody’s actually going to cook anything out of it, etc. - it’ll make a good tie-in blog post about our newspaper holdings. It smells and looks fantastic, and for once dinner is ready an hour before my guests are arriving. The meat seems very tender, and the mushrooms are extremely tasty. Potatoes are in the oven and I actually vacuumed. Aaah, to sit down in a clean house knowing you’ve done absolutely everything already - I even went ahead and made the salad dressing, so all I have to do when people arrive is point them at the wine glasses and the corkscrew and wait for somebody to bring me a glass for the chef. (Okay, so I put a little in the chef around noon, but the chef is dry now.)
After I saw the movie, I decided I was going to make it, too. After I read the recipe, I chickened out. I’m a fairly accomplished cook, but wow, that was time consuming!
I’ll try it one day when I have all day and nothing else to do. (I already make a fantastic stew that was tweaked from Tyler’s Ultimate, that takes 2-1/2 hours. ;))
Kudos for your efforts!!!
It was EXTREMELY well-received. Dolores, it’s time-consuming but not at all difficult - there wasn’t even a time where I felt rushed, as happens sometimes when I don’t chop fast enough. I’d suggest a lazy Saturday or something, though.
ETA - to be precise, I started at noon exactly and was done before 5:30. About two hours of that, broken up, was not stove time.
Awesome. Did everything melt in your mouth? Would you make it again?
How funny! We saw the movie and my boyfriend said, “We are going to Barnes and Noble, buying that book, and making beef bourguignon this weekend!” so we bought the book and are going to make that for dinner this coming Sunday. I’ll let you know how it comes out.
I’ll make it again, but you can’t really have much else planned for that day from noon on except cooking and maybe some cleaning. I should have made bread, too - didn’t think about it. That would have been tasty.
I usually tend to gravitate to recipes that take longer, as in the spaghetti and meatball recipe I posted here quite some time ago. It’s a good three hours, but man is it worth it. Can’t wait until we have a kitchen again so I can try the Child recipe.
Oh, I love Beef Bourguignon. It was one of two recipes my ex-wife served whenever we had a new guest for dinner. And desert was always a mouth-watering strawberry soufflé.
Makes me wish I cooked, but I’ve had bad luck with all prior attempts. Maybe now tho … :Mmmm:
I love all-day recipes, but I don’t often do the kind where you’re actually at the stove for most of that time. It’s fun to, every so often.
ETA - TheMadHun, the MtAoFC recipe is very precise and thoroughly explained - I’d honestly say that anybody who knows how to turn the burners on and cut an onion up could get similar results.
You guys should also give coq au vin a shot–similar procedure to beef bouguignon and almost as good if you start with a flavorful bird.
I love beef bourguignon. My only tip is, for the meat, try it with boneless beef short ribs, if you can find them. Since discovering this cut a few years ago based on somebody’s recommendation, pretty much any beef stew I make starts with this. It just seems beefier than chuck, and I like the cooked texture a little better, although it doesn’t qualify as the “lean” stew meat called for in the Julia Child recipe. Some of it will render out during the browning stage, anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Does is still taste good without mushrooms? We all hate mushrooms in my house…
I’ll have to try those in the spaghetti sauce. It calls for pork ribs and chuck roast (or blade steak), but a substitution may be in order.
It’ll be fine.
We make boeuf bourguignon every year after Christmas. Usually on Boxing Day, or thereabouts, depending on what day of the week Christmas falls on. We use the Joy of Cooking (199x edition) with slight modifications and always marinate the beef overnight in the wine, oil & herbs. At least once we have done it without mushrooms (forgot to buy them) and we always make fresh bread to serve with it. With lots of melty butter. Yum. Can’t wait for cold(er) weather to arrive.
I hate mushrooms too, but you might like these. They’re practically made out of butter by the time you’re done.