I’ve made something similar to that for years, although I also add sauteed cut-up chicken breast to it, and only use rosemary. I also use canned white beans for the dish and it’s yummy.
It’s one of those dishes that is ridiculously easy to make and is pure ambrosia.
Oh my. I made carbonnade for the first time tonight–it’s been one of those dishes that has been on my “to-do” list forever, but I’ve always defaulted to beef bourguignon when I’m in an alcoholic-beverage-based beef stew sort of mood.
Holy shit is it good. Just beef, onions, beer (I used two bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale, per Cook’s Illustrated suggestion. I also had a bottle of Duvel, but I couldn’t bring myself to cook with it. I had to save it for myself. The Newcastle was brilliant in the stew), a little thyme, some mustard, and a little sugar. Served with homemade spaetzle–divine. I might like this more than beef bourguignon. At any rate, another great stew to add to the rotation.
I’ll have to try this one.
Here’s the general recipe that I followed. Cook’s Illustrated apparently suggests Anchor Steam or Newcastle Brown for the beer, if not using a Belgian brown ale. (This is what I gathered from comments across the internet–I don’t have access to Cook’s Illustrated.)
If you read down the comments, one poster suggests a Flemish sour as the traditional beer base–which does sound like a really good idea to me. Another popular suggestion seems to Chimay blue or red. It’s hard for me to cook with Chimay–I just have to drink it. Hell, it’s hard for me to put any Belgian beer into the cooking pot. But that Flemish sour/red ale…that’s for next time.
The Spanish-Style Lamb Stew recipe I use is really, really good. The pimentón de la vera (Spanish paprika) is quite nice; you can probably pick it up at a Whole Foods/Fresh Market type place.
A dish that recommends serving over French fries can’t be bad.
That’s a lotta onion. (To me, that’s a good thing, yes, yes, very much so.) Thanks for the link - will have to try it! Do you think it would work with regular yellow-lable Shiner, or is that too mild to work here?
You want a beer, so far as I can tell, with a real low hop presence, but a bit of a maltiness to it. The Belgian beers have other flavors going on, too, so I like the idea of using a sour ale or one of the Chimays. I’m sure that people who’ve had the dish in Flanders would insist that it has to be made with one of these Belgian beers to really capture the essence of carbonnade, and made with anything else, it’s just a beer & beef stew. But that’s fine. That’s what I did.
That said, I don’t have any yardstick by which to measure. You’re talking about the Shiner Bock, right? I think it would probably do well in this recipe. From what I remember, it’s light in hops, although it is a bit on the sweet side, and a little light on flavor. I would say go for it.
I used 1 1/2 large Spanish onions for about 3 pounds of meat. I’d guess, by weight, my onion-to-meat ratio was on the order of 1:2 or 2:3. (Probably closer to 2:3, as I used beef shanks, and there was a good deal of bone and marrow on them. I cooked and browned the bones along with the stew, just took them out before serving.) This ratio seemed about right to me. It’s a little heavier than the 1:2 ratio I usually use for beef stews, but not terribly so.
I still have about 6 gallons of homemade hard cider in the basement that needs to get used up. I’m thinking a pork-and-cider stew will be in order shortly.
Made some last week:
4 pounds of beef, 3 onions, garlic, some juniper berries, thyme, bay leafs, salt, pepper, two slices of bread with mustard and two bottles of Leffe Dubbel (dark strong Belgian beer).
Very very good.
ETA: I lightly browned the onions with sugar - basically this is the belgian style beef stew.
Did it again. As soon as the pot of chicken-sausage-white bean soup was empty, I had to fill it again. This time, with albondigas >.< Think I finally got enough cumin into the meatballs, that is to say “Good lord, I put a lot of cumin into these meatballs!”.
I love me some cumin.
Anyone want some? I seem to have made between 2-3 gallons this time…
Thanks for the carbonnade recipe link, pulykamell. I made it this past Monday and my boyfriend really liked it. I thought it was good, but overly sweet. I’m not a big fan of sweet in my stews, so that’s probably why. I made it with some St. Bernardus Tripel that I had laying around and followed the linked recipe pretty closely.
Side note: we had some tripel left over and the boyfriend stuck it in the freezer to cool it down and then promptly forgot about it until after dinner. What came out was beer slushie. I have to say, drinking beer slushie by the fireplace is one of the finest things in life.
Next up, beef bourguignon!
Little bumpity-bump to say that even though I didn’t serve it over fries, I made this last night. It is delicious, as promised. Made it with amber Dos Equis, had it on egg noodles. Looking forward to having more tonight once it’s sat for a day, with the Almost-No-Knead bread that’s rising on the counter. Yum. 