Christmas Day 2017 - Beef

Monday, December 25, 2017

Dale decided he wanted to make Julia Child's beef bourginon recipe for Christmas dinner. I helped and was more involved in the production I think since the first time we made it years ago.

To start, my job was to slice the onion.

Dale got the meat dried off with paper towels.

I also took care of getting the carrots sliced. The recipe calls for one carrot. We had baby carrots so I used about 7 of them and sliced them into quarter rounds.

Dale got the stove set up.

I cut six (they're doubled up in the photo) good sized slices of bacon into thirds.

Dale had the brilliant idea of each of us frying the  bacon off at the same time. I used the skillet and he used the casserole. 

Then we did the same thing with the meat, searing it on all sides. I'm surprised one of us hadn't thought of this before since it made it go twice as fast.

We then fried the vegetables and then added the bacon and the beef and put it in the oven for about 4 minutes, took it out and tossed it, and then put it back in for 4 more minutes.

When it came back out we added garlic,

thyme,

the wine,

chicken stock,

and about a tablespoon+ of tomato paste,

brought it to a simmer and then put it in the oven for about 2 and a 1/2 hours.

As it got closer to the time to take it out, Dale fried off the mushrooms.

When it came out of the oven,

we drained off the broth,

put what was left back in the casserole,

and added the fried off mushrooms to the casserole.

Dale needed to boil down the approximately 3 and a 1/2 cups of broth we had down to 2 and a 1/2 cups. He said it probably started out as 5 and a 1/2 cups when we put  the whole casserole in the oven and reduced to  the 3 and a 1/2 we had when we took it out.

After the broth was reduced, Dale skimmed off the fat although there wasn't much since the beef was pretty lean to begin with. We added the broth back to the casserole and waited for it to rest a bit. The smell was insanely divine.

Mom came over for Christmas dinner. She got here at 3:00 p.m. and we watched The Bishop's Wife serving appetizers of smoked gouda, pears, and crackers. 

We ate around 5 p.m. with the beef over egg noodles. Dale made brussels sprouts in the oven. Pumpkin pie for dessert.