Name: Boeuf Bourguignon
Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients: 100 g/3½ oz smoked lardons or smoked streaky bacon, chopped into small pieces; 150 g/5½ oz button mushrooms; 50 g/1¾ oz butter; 2 tablespoons plain flour; 2 celery stalks, roughly chopped; 4 sprigs of thyme; 8 clove garlic, bruised with back of knife; 1 large carrot, roughly chopped; 4 tablespoons olive oil; 1 small onion, roughly chopped; 2 bay leaves; 75 cl bottle of decent red Burgundy (well, something around the £10 mark); 250 ml/9 fl oz beef stock (best you can find, although cubes are just about OK); juice of ½ lemon; 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard; 75 ml/3 fl oz Cognac; 1 kg/2 lb 2 oz topside of beef, fat left on and cut into largish chunks, the size of a small lady’s fist; 24 button/pearl onions, peeled (plunge into boiling water for a minute first), or 400 g/14 oz small shallots; sea salt and freshly ground black pepper; 1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley; 1 pig’s trotter, split lengthways (optional)

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Let's Eat

By Tom Parker Bowles

Published 2013

About

There’s no point beating around the bush. Making this rich, wonderful Burgundian classic takes time. And the ingredients look daunting. There are mushrooms, lardons, pearl onions and beef, all needing to be browned. There are sauces to reduce and strain, trotters to be hewn in half, fat to be skimmed. But none of it actually requires masses of skill. It takes a good few hours to prepare, and is best eaten the next day.

I once cooked it for 30 people, and the house stank of browned e