Julia's Kitchen Nightmare - My Boeuf Bourguignon

It's a beautiful law of randomness that occasionally the same topic pops up from several directions at once, totally unrelated. The latest of these: boeuf bourguignon.

Neal and I both made this simple yet marvelously rich dish on Sunday. We didn't plan to do so, it just happened to come up for both of us at the same time. Neither of us had ever made boeuf bourguignon, or even eaten it before, and it turns out we made it very differently. He created a near stew, including lots of broth to be sopped up by a crust of bread. I produced moist and tender lumps of beef with a minimum of thick and rich sauce.

Even though neither of us had any idea what we were doing, we both made delicious meals, and both thought ours was the right way to do it. With the end product so different, we can't both be correct. But maybe we're not both wrong either. Good food can never be wrong.

I don't really use traditional recipes, kitchen renegade that I am, so I started with 5 or 6 basic steps shared by Tony on No Reservations and went my own way from there. In the interest of sharing (and remembering my method for next time), here's how I did it:

1. Toss beef cubes in salt and pepper
2. Heat some olive oil in a heavy sauce pan over medium heat, and add the beef cubes
3. When beef is about 3/4 of the way browned, drain off all the fat and oil from the pan
4. Return the pan to the heat and finish browning
5. Remove meat from the pan, don't drain the fat (unless it's excessive, there should only be a little)
6. Throw in a couple Tablespoons of butter and a diced white onion, cook on medium until onion is translucent
7. Add a couple of chopped carrots, lightly salt and pepper, and stir a few times
8. Pour in just enough burgundy* to surround the veggies
9. Stir everything together and gently loosen the  browned bits from the bottom of the pan
10. Add beef back to the pan, along with enough burgundy to cover it
11. Bring just to a simmer, reduce to low heat, and walk away
12. Every 20 minutes or so, pay the pan a visit. Stir, and skim off any major oil slicks. Do this while allowing it to cook for the next 90 minutes
13. This is the minimum cooking time, but longer further breaks down the meat and creates deeper flavors.  At the top of each additional hour of cooking time, add in another cup of wine or so, then go back to checking at intervals. 

*Yes, you MUST use burgundy, no substituting random red wine. It's boeuf bourguignon, not boeuf cheap merlot!