Beef Bourguignon

We broke out the cookbook today.  To be more exact, we broke out the Julia Child Beef Bourguignon recipe.  My God.  No really.  I had no idea it was this good.  If you have a few hours to kill do yourself a favor and make this.  If you really want to impress someone have them over for dinner and serve this.  If you want to induce a food coma of ecstasy, serve this.

Let us begin.

You'll need to hit the grocery store and the liquor store if you happen to live in a state where the two can't be purchased at the same place.  Like Maryland.  And pick up some crusty bread for sopping up sauce.  You'll thank me for that one.

You are going to do a lot of cooking in stages.  This seems wasteful.  But it builds a wonderful fond on the bottom of your pan and I think the end result is totally worth the extra effort.  Brown chopped bacon.

Remove bacon, brown cubed stew beef.  See the fond?

Remove meat, brown onions and carrots in same pot/drippings/FOND.

Now you can combine everything together again and deglaze with just about an entire bottle of red wine and add to that some beef stock.  We found unsalted beef stock to control the sodium level and I would do the same next time.

This is what you are left with.  A disgusting purple soup that really doesn't smell very good.  It looks like crap.  I was worried at this point.  But it's okay.  Shove it in the oven for two and a half hours and work on your onions and mushrooms in the meantime.  Cause at the end of that long wait, after you have stirred in your sauted mushrooms and onions, you have this.

Savory from the wine, beefy, sweet from the onion, and bread sopping good.  Eat it as a stew and make sure you have a comfy napping spot ready.  You'll need it when the food coma kicks in.