by Many years ago, when I was in grad school and would make recipes from the red plaid Better Homes & Gardens cookbook I was given by my mother, eating the meal over the course of a couple days, I liked to make a Beef Burgundy recipe with the Gallo (cheap) burgundy wine.
Then they stopped selling burgundy wine and, this being prior to the development of the internet as an endless reference source, I didn’t know why but tried some other red wine and the taste just didn’t work. Finally, not long ago, I stumbled on an explanation that, since those grad school days, Gallo stopped making a product they called “Burgundy” because that label was reserved for French wines from that region of the country but that a dry red wine would work in such recipes.
So when I found a recipe for Beef Burgundy in an Instant Pot cookbook which called specifically for Pinot Noir, so I gave it a try and it was a hit with the family. Here’s the recipe, as I made it:
5 strips bacon, chopped
2 pounds chuck roast, cut into small chunks
1 large onion, chopped
1/2 cup Pinot Noir
1/2 – 1 cup baby-cut carrots, cut into fourths or so
1 package prewashed & trimmed radishes, cut into halves or quarters
3/4 cup-equivalent water + beef bouillon (because I never actually use canned beef broth)
1/4 cup flour
2 tablespoons tomato paste
Cook the bacon with the sauté/normal heat mode, until crisp, then set aside on a paper towel. Spoon off and discard drippings in excess of 1 1/2 tbsp. (I like to use center-cut bacon, from which there aren’t as many drippings.)
Season beef with 3/4 tsp salt and some pepper. (I actually forgot this step and tossed in some salt afterwards.) Then brown half the beef on the sauté/high heat mode. Cook without stirring for 3 minutes, then stir and cook a few minutes more. Add the onions and cook ’til tender, then add the wine and simmer, scraping up the browned bits.
Add the remaining beef, bacon, carrots, 1/2 cup of broth, and tomato paste, pressure cook for 30 – 35 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes and then quick-release the remaining pressure. (Or maybe don’t wait the 10 minutes; not sure it matters.) In the meantime, whisk together the remaining broth and the flour, then add to the pot, and simmer under sauté/medium heat until thickened.
Comments:
I started making this recipe with round steak rather than chuck roast because it just took too dang long to cut up and trim the fat on chuck roast. There is a difference in flavor and somehow or another it seems that the chuck roast I’ve been picking up lately has less fat to trim/is easier to trim, so I’ve been using actual chuck roast. It was fine with round steak, though, and the sauce is flavorful enough that the loss of flavor in the meat is not a huge problem, though I did think it needed more time to pressure-cook.
(Surprisingly, even though it takes a long time to come up to pressure the first time around, for reasons that aren’t clear to me, when you release the pressure and then re-start, it doesn’t take as long the second time.)
The recipe also calls for significantly less wine than my old recipe, which uses 1 1/2-ish cups. In fact, at one point, to use up more of the wine, because I’m not a red wine drinker and my husband, who is, had been traveling, I then made the other burgundy-wine recipe from the old cookbook, coq au vin, and it was kind of meh. But the combo of wine, broth, and tomato paste was yummy — and what’s even more of a surprise is that it doesn’t require half a dozen different herbs on top.
Also, the recipe calls for Pinot Noir. Aldi, it turns out, doesn’t have Pinot Noir among its selections, so I tried some substitutes. Their Winking Owl Merlot ($2.99) was not a good alternative, but the Cabernet Sauvignon (also $2.99) was.
And the kids really like it. Fun fact: according to the internet, alcohol doesn’t really cook out, when you’re cooking with wine in a stew like this, and especially so in the Instant Pot. But I’m not going to worry about children consuming a couple tablespoons’ worth of wine.
Is it keto-able? Sure, you could probably substitute a keto-friendly thickener like xanthan gum for the flour. Also, the radishes make a pretty good substitute for potatoes, a trick I got from another recipe.
Finally, a note: I did get this recipe from a cookbook from the library, but, again, recipes aren’t copyrightable except for the clever turns of phrase that go beyond basic descriptions of the cooking method.
The picture: I served it with mashed potatoes. And this was the second helping, so it looks like a small quantity, because I forgot to take a picture of the first helping.
