Let's Cook French - French recipe: Traditional flemish braised beef stew ( carbonades )

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	Traditional flemish braised beef stew ( carbonades )
	Traditional flemish braised beef stew ( carbonades )

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Preparation : 30 min
Cooking: 3h

Ingredients (serves 4):

- 2 lbs (1 kg) lean beef to braise (shoulder, breast...)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 bouquet garni (or other herbs, depending on what's available)
- 1 litre brown beer to suit taste
- 1 lb (400 g) onions
- 1/2 lb (250 g) smoked bacon
- 5 to 7 slices gingerbread (if possible home made)
- butter
- coarse sea salt
- mustard (a little)
- a cast iron enamelled or an inox cooking pot (casserole) with a lid

Directions:

Cut the meat into squares of 1 inch long (2.5 cm).
Cut coarsely the onions and tbacon in large strips.
In the pot, melt the butter and add the onions till tender, about 10 minutes (cover and simmer at the lowest heat).
Add the bacon, increasing heat slightly, stir up regularly while trying to keep covered as much as possible.

Once the bacon is quite pink, remove the preparation (except for the liquid) and reserve it in a dish.
Raise the heat to the maximum, set the meat in the pot, stir in regularly (do not cover), brown the meat on all sides, which will end up by giving quite a lot of liquid.

Remove the meat from the heat into a dish and let the liquid in the pot.
Dissolve the brown sugar in the liquid and raise the heat to the maximum to reduce the liquid by about half.
Once it is reduced, lower the heat to the minimum and add the bacon and onions mixture while tossing it into the ' syrup', add the meat and mix again, add the bouquet garni and cover with beer, about 80 cl to 1 litre.
Slightly salt.
Set delicately the gingerbread 'spread with mustard' on the whole top surface.
Simmer covered for about 3 hours without stirring in, as long as the gingerbread has not melted (take out the bouquet garni after 1 or 2 hours maximum).

While simmering, taste for the seasoning if needed.
If after three hours, the gravy is still too liquid, keep simmering in leaving the lid partly opened, the gravy must be slightly sticky on the surface but quite liquid underneath and should definitely not be burnt at the bottom.
Best prepared the day before or even better 2 days before, allowing to simmer in two parts:
First, simmer 1:30 to 2:00 hours, let it cool down and keep it in a cool place (at this time, the preparation is still very liquid)
The next day, discard the pork belly fat on the surface, and reheat again at low heat during 1:30 to 2:00 hours by opening or not the lid, according to the gravy thickness.

A good brown beer, not too much sugared

Recipe shared by Laurent Lecoutre, laurent_lecoutre@hotmail.com.

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