Beef stew with rice, onions and tomatoes
French cuisine · ANTI-CHEF · ♥ 14.6K likes · 398.2K views · 14 min video
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Read about round (top, bottom, eye of round, knuckle) in the BrightCulinary Book
Timestamp
Ingredients
Method
Techniques
- slab bacon
Remove the rind from the slab bacon and cut it into lardon, one and a half inch strips three eighths of an inch thick.
Bring water to a simmer in a saucepan and simmer the bacon 10 minutes, without boiling, to draw out the salt, nitrate and smoke flavour of American bacon. Drain on paper towel.
- 3 lb stewing beef
Cut the stewing beef into pieces and dry it thoroughly so it will brown.
Render the trimmed beef fat and some of the trimmed bacon fat down in the Dutch oven, then brown the beef a few pieces at a time and set it aside.
- 1½ cups onions
Lower the heat, add a little pork fat and cook the sliced onions. Remove them.
Onions, lardons and toasting the rice
Brown the lardon lightly in a second frying pan, lift out with a slotted spoon and add its fat to the Dutch oven.
- 1 cup white rice
Saute the raw unwashed rice in the fat until it turns a milky colour, then set it aside.
- 1 cup dry white wine
Pour in the white wine and boil it down, scraping the pan to deglaze. Strain it if burnt bits have come up.
- 2–3 cups beef stock
Into the cleaned casserole put the beef, the lardon, the onions and the deglazing wine, but not the rice. Add two to three cups of beef stock, to almost the height of the beef.
Assembling the stew for the oven
- 2 cloves garlic
- ½ tsp thyme
- 1 whole bay leaf
Add the mashed garlic, thyme, the whole bay leaf, the saffron, the pepper and salt to taste.
- saffron
- ¼ tsp pepper
- salt
Bring to a simmer, lid on, and cook on the bottom rack of a 350 oven for an hour.
- 1 lb tomatoes
Boil the tomatoes 10 seconds, cut out the stems, peel them, halve them crosswise and squeeze out the juice and seeds over a sieve, then rough chop.
Stir the tomatoes in, bring back to a simmer, add a little more salt and return to the oven for another hour.
- 1 cup beef stock
Turn the oven up to 375. Tilt the casserole to remove the fat and check there is two to two and a half cups of liquid; top up with about a cup of beef stock if there is not.
Degreasing and checking the liquid
- Parmesan
Check the meat is almost tender, stir in the sauteed rice and a little more salt, bring to a simmer and return to the 375 oven for a final 20 minutes, without stirring, so the rice cooks.
Cooking the rice in the stew
The rice soaks up all the liquid. Correct with more salt and pepper and pull out the bay leaf.