I had some extra meat from last night’s beef bourguignon and I wanted to try a modern take on the French classic. The original is an incredibly fussy recipe, lots of nuanced technique that takes two days to complete…so of course I love doing it.
Deconstructing the original recipe, we see that the foundation technique is braising (fry and stew meat), the braising liquid is alcohol with stock (wine and chicken stock) seasoned with a trinity (mirepoix). It would be trivial to swap the braising liquid and trinity for something more exotic.
Buta no Kakuni (豚の角煮) is a classic Japanese dish of pork belly braised in shoyo, mirin, dashi, and sake. It’s a personal favourite of mine and the ingredients would make easy substitutions for my modern take on beef bourguignon.
Ingredients (or what I think are pretty clever substitutions)
4 pound chuck roast, silver skin removed and cut into 1″ cubes
1 pound pork belly
2 large carrots
1 pretty big piece of fresh ginger
1 red onion
1 shallot
1 garlic head, cloves separated, unpeeled, and crushed
1 ~4″ piece of kombu
1 packet of bonito flakes
6 sprigs of thyme
1 bay leaf
2 cups nigori sake
2 cups mirin
1 cup low sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
¼ cup MSG
10oz beef stock (or chicken stock, whatever)
6 tablespoons of gelatin
Sesame oil as needed
Butter to taste
Tools
Dutch oven
large skillet
oven preheated to 300°F
cheesecloth
cooking twine
patience
I’m not really good at writing recipes from scratch, so I’ll try walking you through my process.
The traditional recipe involves a technique called larding, where you thread thin strips of pork fat through the cubes of beef. Modern beef is sufficiently marbled that larding is no longer required, but we still want the flavor of pork fat. Bacon or salt pork works great for this, but with buta no kakuni on my mind I opted for pork belly.
Score the skin-side of the pork belly then cut into 1″ cubes and fry in a hot pan of sesame oil. Wait for the oil to “shimmer” so you know it’s hot enough for frying, and don’t use a nonstick pan. The residue that develops (called a fond) when browning meat is desirable here.
Our goal is to caramelize the surface of the pork belly, which looks like this:
Gorgeous.
Toss the seared pork belly into your dutch oven when all sides are golden brown. Then, using the reserved pork fat to brown your beef.
Use paper towels to dry the beef, then season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
Sear in batches, don’t crowd the pan, otherwise it won’t sear correctly as too much moisture will flood the pan. Add the browned beef to the dutch oven and deglaze the pan with water to prevent burnt flavors from developing. Scrape off any burnt bits from the bottom of the pan and add the deglazed pan sauce to the dutch oven.
While the meat is browning, let’s assemble the bouquet. Inside a 24-square-inch cheesecloth, add coarsely chopped carrots, onions, shallots, ginger, garlic, thyme, kombu, and bonito flakes. The flavors of these ingredients will pass through the cheesecloth while cooking without changing the texture of the sauce…if you like a heartier stew, you can skip this step.
Tie the bouquet closed and place it in the middle of your dutch oven, surrounded by browned beef and pork belly.
Now we add the braising liquids. Sake, stock, soy sauce, oyster sauce, mirin, MSG, gelatin, and tomato paste. The bouquet should be fully submerged by liquid, so add water if necessary.
Cover the dutch oven and place in oven at 300°F for 3 hours.
Your house will smell amazing during this time.
Carefully take the dutch oven out and bring it to a boil on your stovetop. We want to reduce the sauce by half to concentrate the flavour. You can speed this process up by removing the meat from the dutch oven.
Once the sauce is reduced, top with sauteed shiitake mushrooms and caramelized pearl onions. Serve over udon noodles.
There you go. Noodles and Beef.
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