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Carbonnade Flamande recipe (Flemish Beef and Beer Braise)

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G.M. Gillman
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Carbonnade Flamande recipe (Flemish Beef and Beer Braise)

Post by G.M. Gillman »

I have made this dish countless ways in 30 years and always come back to this recipe, which is from a French Belgian beer cookbook written in the 1970's.

Ingredients:

1 kilo beef chuck or round. Best to cube meat but some people slice it, you can do half-inch slices but cubed is best.

A few onions.

A pint of beer (more or less, and you can mix beer and stock as Jeff said)

Tablespoon brown sugar

large teaspoon dried mixed herbs

Wine vinegar but not needed if the beer is a Belgian sour like a gueuze or old brown

Two slices or so of good quality bread dried

Liquid mustard, any good French type

Method:

Brown the meat first in fat of any kind, I use oil and marge but any kind works except maybe corn oil. I find it is better to lightly flour the meat first, it helps the browning and mixes well with the bread.

Slice onions and saute them in more fat but don't brown them or very little, cook until translucent

Transfer beef and onions to a roaster, I use the blue oval kind with a close fitting lid

Boil beer and vinegar if used. You can use any kind of beer but if you don't use a sour style make sure to add vinegar, about 1/4 cup.

Pour boiling beer and vinegar mixture onto meat, it should not cover it but come close to doing so. Sprinkle in the herbs (Italian seasoning is good since it is a herb blend but you can make your own, fresh herbs can be uses too but I think ti is better using dried ones that are fresh, e.g. from those Schwartz bottles or similar)

Salt and pepper. You need some salt but don't add too much, a teaspoon should be enough.

Spread mustard on two slices of dried good bread - the bread musn't be too fresh. Lay bread slices with mustard side down on the mixture - it will swell as the cooking continues.

Cover, bake at 325-350 for an hour and half or so until fork tender. The meat should not be allowed to get too stringy. Half way through, check, and stir swelled bread slices into the sauce and amalgamate well so the sauce will be thickish but with a good consistency. The sauce will cook down as the baking continues, some vapour escapes from the edges of the lid and in fact you want this.

When ready take out, defat sauce if necessary - I just skim it with a spoon. It is better to let it cool on the oventop and reheat, even next day (put in fridge overnight when cooled) because it is always better that way, but if well made it eats very nicely fresh too.

That's it. I have added shots of liquor of various kinds, bacon, tomato (doesn't work), many other things, and we always come back to the above method. But of course creativity is the soul of good cooking, and your own "touch" won't hurt if well thought out. The key to the dish IMO is the beer, the beef, the onions, the mustard, the sour element, the bread, and the herbs. You can add to it, but those elements alone make a classic dish!

Gary
Gary Gillman

G.M. Gillman
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Post by G.M. Gillman »

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/ca ... beer_stew/
Here is an excellent carbonnade recipe from the Internet. It is very similar to the one I recount above from the 1970's Belgian book, with some variation in the type of herbs. Good pictures too which show parts of the method as it progresses. To me the best accompaniments are brussel sprouts and good French fries. It may sound odd to pair french fries and a stew, but the Belgians do this and in fact it works great.

By the way although I take Jeff's point about using some stock, in fact I prefer it with all-beer, but it is always a personal choice. With 3 1/2 lbs meat, I think you need more like a liter of beer, or beer and stock, at least that is my experience, but it may depend too on your cooking pot. A very heavy Dutch oven, say, probably can use less liquid - which is a truer braise and less a stew - since less vapour will escape the pot than in the typical speckled blue roaster. Anyway all this can be adjusted by the careful cook. I should say too, if you know the sauce will reduce a fair bit, watch how much salt you use, since the salt will concentrate as the reduction proceeds.

Gary

P.S. The author of the Internet recipe suggests that it is traditional to add some liver to the recipe. I have never seen this, and probably have read a couple of hundred recipes over 30 years for carbonnade. I wonder if she is thinking of the "choesels" dish, a Brussels speciality which uses various cuts of offal, but choesels is not a carbonnade as far as I know. Choesels enters into the true exotica of Belgian cookery and I am sure recipes are easily found online. If anyone tries it, I'd be interested how it came out!
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Post by ECBS »

Thanks, Gary! I (likely meaning my wife, with me drinking Goudenband in the background) will definitely be trying my (her) hand at this in the coming weeks. Can't wait!

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Post by Belgian »

This is a 'no fail' dish for anyone (I use the recipe from 'Joy') if you just pay a little attention and control the heat well. Once it's simmering on low, set the alarm and forget it.

I also find it makes little difference with stews/braises if you want to make some minor exclusions - eg. skip all the wheat, or don't use pork lardons but instead use other frying fats - a lot of these things are good but a little arbitrary, and it's the good primary ingredients and careful assembly that matter more. Meat beer and onions. Slow even heat.

Essential for me - I would also have included pureed or minced garlic in the initial boil of the beer. Garlic & Trois Pistoles & beef is the Holy Trinity of carbonnade, it makes the aroma come together in an incredible way. My neighbor actually noticed how crazy good it smelled. A dash of something like Oloroso sherry also adds to this craziness of aromas. The port-winey Trois Pistoles is not the only beer that will work, so I'd experiment - Goudenband or Duchesse would be a classic choice.

Not traditional - adding some quartered fresh mushrooms in the last five to ten minutes can be good, but don't overdo it. (In Coq au Vin I would probably add a tonne.)

This stew goes with any of your favorite gravy-soaking starches - can try gnocci, german späzle, egg noodles or go traditional with new potatoes with dill or parsley. Carbonnade pairs well with a contrasting beer (a Doppelbock is great, or a different-style Belgian than you used) as will a nicely acidic medium-bodied red such as Bicycleta Pinot Noir or a Cotes du Rhone.

So... a recipe with many versions that are probably all good. Let us know how it goes for you!
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JeffPorter
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Post by JeffPorter »

my favourite one comes from James Peterson's Meat book.

Here's the book -




Can't find the recipe online, but I gotta say, this book is really worth having in your culinary library.
"What can you say about Pabst Blue Ribbon that Dennis Hopper hasn’t screamed in the middle of an ether binge?" - Jordan St. John

Ukie
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Post by Ukie »

Basically followed Gary's recipe with a few modifications:

-5 slices chopped bacon before the onions went in

-used brisket

-carmelized the onions

-no stock just Goudenband

-left it in the Creuset on the stove, cooked for little better than 2 hours probably 2.5 -3 hours would have been better.

Fanastic result all due to the recipe not my skills.

My wife really liked it considering she is not really a fan of stews or similar dishes. So of course I had to point out that if I was to make it again I would have to get some more Goudenband or it just wouldn't be the same....

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Post by Belgian »

^ Round and chuck at braising temperatures can go up to 2.5-3 hrs, and brisket 3 to 3.5 hrs. So long as the liquid & meat doesn't dry out the slow heat is 'melting away' the connective tissue between the fibers, making the meat more tender.

Funny thing Uke I was at Hogtown Smoke last night in the Beach, scarfing down glorious piles of slow-cooked meat, and felt inspired to do an essentially similar recipe to Carbonnade but using whole (not cubed) brisket. Might need to get a large oval dutch pot!

Those dutch ovens are made to go stovetop-to-oven for very even heat all over, but don't always have to.

Also some meats like beef cheeks improve in the fridge after braising and can be made days ahead.
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G.M. Gillman
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Post by G.M. Gillman »

All sounds great, great ideas. Brisket tends to need longer, I agree, it's more fibrous than chuck or round, and it would be similar for cheek or shank. Our typical cubed chuck needs not more than 90 minutes at 350 usually, it tends to reach the right point of springy tenderness by then. You can go longer but it risks making it too tough. If you go just an hour, I find it isn't cooked enough.

In my view, you can cook these cuts whole but it shouldn't really sit fully in the liquid, as a stew would. It is more a pot roast or braise, so the liquid used is less (depending too on size of your roaster/Dutch oven) than for a stew.

In the classic carbonnade, the pieces of meat are drenched in the sauce and especially the next day get more tender by sitting in the beer/vinegar/etc. liquid. Anyway these are adaptable recipes and as long as the result tastes good you can't go wrong..

Gary
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Post by Belgian »

Speaking of tenderizing Gary there's a bbcgoodfood recipe that says to pre-marinate the beef in beer and vinegar for 24 hours, then make the stew. Seems fussy but might add something.

Here's David Ort chipping in his two francs worth. Mostly a review that will only help Goudenband's return, but I sometimes feel we're being watched!
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G.M. Gillman
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Post by G.M. Gillman »

Just on the point of marinating, personally I don't do this although clearly it is optional. I find the meat acquires a "raw beer" taste which doesn't come out in the cooking, but again question of taste.

In Dorothy Hartley's Food In England, a 1950's historical look at English food, she includes a recipe for beef cooked in beer. She said it was a special dish for harvest workers.

It isn't a carbonnade-type dish, as I recall it is that the beer, spiced of course with pepper and other things, forms a good medium to help tenderize the meat. She advises long marination. My thinking is, probably in the old days, the beer used for this purpose would have been sour or half-sour, probably not that different to Goudenband in fact, and the acidity helped to tenderize the meat over a day or two in a cool larder. So it has been done, no question, and I know many beer cookery books advise it. It's all in the final result...

Gary
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Post by Belgian »

^ thanks Gary, I didn't really think marinating is necessary for Carbonnade. It seems like a recipe of someone who likes to marinate everything they cook, and the acid would pre 'cook' the beef a little, sauerbraten-style (mmm, sauerbraten...)

I usually marinate only foods that call for quick-grilling or -frying, especially light meats such as shark steak or Greek chicken kabobs. There's a payoff there.

When you're simmering the main ingredients for hours as with carbonnade marinating seems unnecessary.
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Post by G.M. Gillman »

I have a sauerbraten recipe, from Austria in the 1950's, which uses beer instead of the more typical wine and the person recounting it said it was sensational. I will dig this out.

Gary
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