My favorite recipe for Boeuf Bourgignon is Ina Garten's:

Boeuf Bourguignon
Serves 6

1 tablespoon good olive oil
8 oz good bacon, diced
2-1/2 pounds beef chuck cut into 1-inch cubes
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 pound carrots, sliced diagonally into 1-inch chunks
2 yellow onions, sliced
2 teaspoons chopped garlic (2 cloves)
cup Cognac or good brandy
1 (750-ml) bottle good dry red wine, such as Burgundy
2 - 2-1/2 cups canned beef broth
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
4 tablespoon (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, divided
3 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 pound frozen small whole onions
1 pound mushrooms, stems discarded, caps thickly sliced

For serving:
Country bread, toasted or grilled
1 garlic clove, cut in half
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (optional)

Preheat the oven to 250°F.

In a large Dutch oven, heat the olive oil and add the bacon. Cook on medium for 8-10 minutes, or until bacon is lightly browned. Remove bacon, leaving drippings in pan, and place on a large plate or platter.

Using a paper towel, dry off the cubes of beef and season with salt and pepper. Brown in the hot pan in single layers to sear. When brown on all sides remove and place on the plate with the bacon. Set plate aside.

Toss the carrots and onions with 1 Tbsp salt and 2 tsp pepper. Cook in the Dutch oven with the drippings until the onions are lightly browned (10-12 minutes), stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Pour in the Cognac and carefully ignite. When alcohol is burned off, return meat, bacon and any accumulated juices to the Dutch oven. Pour in the wine and enough broth to nearly cover the meat. Stir in the tomato paste and thyme. Bring to a boil and cover with a tight-fitting lid. Place in the oven and bake for about an hour and 15 minutes, or until contents are very tender. Test by piercing with a fork. Remove from the oven and place on cooktop burner.

Mix 2 Tbsp of soft butter with the flour and stir into the Dutch oven. Sauté the mushrooms in the rest of the butter (about 10 minutes) and add to the Dutch oven. Bring the stew to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings. Rub one side of each slice of bread with the garlic.

To serve: spoon the stew over bread and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Notes from Ina:
1. If the sauce is too thin, it can be thickened with more of the butter/flour mixture.
2. To make in advance the stew can be cooked and refrigerated. Reheat on low before serving with the bread and parsley.

Source: Barefoot in Paris, copyright October 2004

Lori

I made a boeuf bourguignon last Tuesday. See if this is simpler than the recipe you used?

- Pre-heat oven to 300F. Get a roasting pan, or a dutch oven, or some other large pot.
- 4 lbs beef (prefer cuts w/ lots of fat and connective tissue, do not use expensive lean cuts, slice into large chunks, appx 4'' per side). If you can find some beef bones, pigs' feet, beef knuckles, get a couple pounds.
- Heat roasting pan over burners at high heat, add some oil, brown beef, turning to get all sides nice and brown. Add 1 med onion (roughly cut up), half of a little can of tomato paste, a couple slices of bacon (roughly chopped), a few gloves of garlic (no need to peel, just smash them a bit), and optionally a couple twigs of rosemary and some herbes de provence, and 1 full bottle of red wine (but reserve 1/4 cup). Stir to sort of mix the tomato paste and beef. The beef should be mostly submerged in wine, though needn't be fully covered. Add more wine if needed. Also add the bones, feet, etc if you got them.
- Bring wine to boil, then turn heat off. Cover roasting pan with aluminium foil. Move pan to 300F oven. Leave in for 4 hours. Every 30 min or so, check to make sure the wine is not boiling hard - simmering or gently bubbling is okay - and stir/turn the beef so that every part gets submerged for a while. Otherwise you don't need to fuss over it, and the timing is not critical.
- After 3 hours, cut four large peeled carrots into 1'' pieces, add them to the pan.
- After 4 hours, oven off, remove pan from oven. The beef should be tender, not falling apart but can be pulled apart with fingers or two forks. The carrots should be cooked but firm and not falling apart. Remove the beef and carrot and keep warm - maybe in a warm bowl, covered with foil, parked on the counter for a while then back in the turned-off oven after the oven has cooled a bit.
- Pour all the liquid and etc in the pan, though a mesh strainer, into a pot. Discard all the solid stuff - the onion, garlic, bacon, herbs, bones, feet, etc. But you want every last drop of the liquid.
- The liquid shouldn't be too oily or fatty. If it is, spoon off some of the fat.
- Over medium heat, i.e. a medium boil, in the uncovered pot, reduce the liquid by at least 1/3 and more if you have patience. It make take an hour. You want about 2 cups. Go by taste and thickness - you want the sauce intensely flavoured and doing the proverbial ''coats a spoon''. Now add a splash from the reserved 1/4 cup of fresh wine, just to brighten the flavour a bit.
- Plate beef, spoon on plenty of sauce, add carrots, garnish with something green (parsley? chives? whatever's around), serve.

The whole process takes a long time (4-5 hours?) but there is less than an hour of actual work, no fancy prepping/slicing, no careful measurements, timing is relaxed, you can take a nap.

Some recipes complicate it with pearl onions, mushrooms, blah blah. That is all optional, basically just garnishing. The essence of boeuf bourguignon is beef and wine. It's not called boeuf bourguignon avec blah blah. If you want blah blah flavour, just dump plenty of blah blah in the wine at the start and strain them out with the other stuff four hours later - the flavour will be in the sauce.

Oh - do not skimp on the reducing part. If you don't reduce, but just serve with the liquid as it came from the pan, it will be a different dish. Good, but nothing special.

Sauce is like waistlines. You can't reduce enough.

I like this recipe of Julia Child's. Made using slices of beef tenderloin.

Home Cookin Chapter: Recipes From Thibeault's Table

Beef Burgundy/Bourginon.
========================

2 to 3 pound beef tenderloin

Make a sauce using:
1-1/2 cups red wine 1 1/2 cups beef
Broth 1 clove of garlic minced 1
Cups tomato paste pinch of thyme
Bring to a boil and simmer slowly
Until reduced by half
Braise about 15 to 20 pearl onions
Saute 1/2 pound of sliced mushrooms
. Slice a beef tenderloin into 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch thick slices. Dry
well and brown on both sides in butter and oil. Add the onion and
mushrooms to the reduced wine sauce and thicken with 1 tablespoon of
flour blended with 1 tablespoon of butter. Add the beef to thicken
sauce. May be prepared up to this point and reheated later. Meat should
be rare to medium rare so be careful when you reheat. This is adjusted
from a Julia Child recipe.

We use Julia's recipe, too, and it is wonderful. Yes, labor-intensive, but it's something that we do once in a while, and on a weekend when we want to spend time cooking. No shortcuts or substitutions.

I'm going to irritate here, I'm sorry.

That recipe is tasty I'm sure, but it is not boeuf bourgignon. It is rare tenderloin covered with a beef-wine sauce that has been made independently from, with no connection to, the main meat. It will taste no more like boeuf bourgignon that a steakhouse prime rib will taste like a slow-cooked beef stew. It may taste better, depending on preference, but nothing like.

Julia Child recipe from ''Mastering The Art . . .''

I'm with Johnliu on this question. The meat for this dish is always big pieces, not 1"dice. And the longer and slower the better. The first recipe has too many carrots - more like "beouf aux carottes" way too sweet for Boeuf bourgignon.
It is mostly thickened with a roux and, here I don't agree with Julia, it's usually served with noodles. And always better the next day!

John, I too prefer the traditional Beef B. that you link to but the one Ann posted is also a Julia Child recipe and she called it Beef B. as well her original recipe.

I think the one style, the one I prefer, is more a stew while the other is more a Beef in Burgundy Sauce. Both are delicious.

Jon, you aren't irritating. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and taste.

I think it is good to have options.

For me, I've never been a big fan of a true Bourguignon. I prefer a good basic beef stew over Bourguignon.

Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking - Page: 315

Boeuf Bourguignon/Boeuf a La Bourguignonne
(Beef Stew in Red Wine, with Bacon, Onions, and Mushrooms)

Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking - Page: 326
Saute de Boeuf a la Bourguignoone
(Beef Saute with Red Wine, Mushrooms Bacon and Onions)

I love Julia's other Beef with Red wine, Mushrooms, Bacon and Onion recipe. Not only doesn't it contain the hated carrot, but it uses beef tenderloin, served rare. Perfect for a special dinner party.

Ann

I'm probably going to again make the boeuf bourguignon dish I initially posted, for a dinner next weekend. I'll try to keep closer track of the ingredients, quantities, and times.