Beef Bourguignon

Ingredients

• 1.2kg stewing beef, cut into 3cm pieces
• 500ml hot beef stock
• 40g plain flour
• 3 carrots, cut into chunks
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 2 onions, roughly chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 4 sprigs fresh thyme
• 750ml red wine
• 2 tbsp rapeseed oil
• 150g smoked bacon lardons
• 2 bay leaves
• 300g chestnut mushrooms, halved
• 200g pearl onions, peeled
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley (optional)
• Crusty sourdough bread, to serve

Method

1. Pat the beef dry with kitchen paper — water means steam, and steam means no browning. Toss the pieces in the flour with a generous pinch of salt and plenty of black pepper, shaking off the excess.
2. Heat the oil in a heavy frying pan until it shimmers. Brown the beef in three batches, leaving space between the pieces — crowd the pan and the meat sweats instead of searing. You want a deep mahogany crust on at least two sides, about 3–4 minutes a batch. Transfer to the slow cooker.
3. Drop the bacon lardons into the same pan and let the fat render for 2–3 minutes until they're beginning to crisp. Add the onions and carrots and cook for 6–8 minutes until softened and catching gold at the edges, scraping up the dark stuck bits from the beef as you go — that fond is half the flavour.
4. Add the crushed garlic and cook for just 30 seconds until fragrant — pale gold, no further. Burnt garlic turns the whole braise bitter. Tip the lot into the slow cooker.
5. Pour the red wine into the hot pan and let it bubble hard for a minute, scraping every last bit of fond off the base. Add this to the slow cooker along with the hot beef stock, tomato purée, rinsed lentils, thyme sprigs and bay leaves. The tinned-tomato note from the purée needs the wine and stock to break it down — without that liquid, you taste raw paste.
6. Cover and cook on low for 7–8 hours (or high for 4–5) until the beef pulls apart under the lightest pressure of a fork and the sauce has thickened to a glossy, deep-mahogany gravy.
7. Twenty minutes before the end, melt the butter in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and pearl onions in a single layer and leave them alone for 3 minutes before stirring — that's how you get the caramelised edges. Cook for 8–10 minutes total until golden, season with salt and pepper, then tip into the slow cooker to warm through.
8. Fish out the bay leaves and thyme stalks. Taste the sauce, then taste again — adjust the salt and pepper now, not at the table. The wine carries acid all the way through the long braise, so it needs no finishing squeeze; what it wants is seasoning.
9. Spoon the bourguignon over a mound of mashed potato or alongside torn crusty bread, scatter the chopped parsley generously over each plate, and serve.