In April of last year, I made a post about Recipe Patterns. In it, I said:
My old way of making carbonnade (Belgian Beer and Onion Stew) was pretty easy. First caramelize two large sliced yellow onions. Then mix up flour, black pepper, thyme, and a little paprika in a paper bag. Toss three pounds of cubed beef (from a round steak or stewing beef or whatever) in the flour and dig it out, so it's lightly coated all over with the flour. Sear this in a mixture of oil and butter. Stir in two bottle of belgian ale, 1 cup of really good beef stock, 1 Tbsp of tomato paste, and the onions. Cover and stick in a 375F over for 1 hr and 15 minutes. The result? Silky brown sauce with the onions dissolved into it, and beef that was falling apart. Served over parsleyed noodles or spaetzle, with a salad and some crusty bread and boom! Dinner.
Here's how I do it now. Caramelize the onions. Cube the beef and season it with salt and pepper. Sear it in oil and butter. Deglaze the pan with the beer and stir around until all the fond comes up. Put the meat, the onions, and the beef broth back in the pan and turn up the heat. Boil, stirring constantly for about 15-25 minutes until the liquid is thick and silky. Stir in 1Tbsp tomato paste, some thyme and some paprika. Adjust salt and pepper to taste, and cook another 2 minutes. Cool and refrigerate. Reheat tomorrow and you're good to go. The sauce is (I think) richer and better than the other sauce, but there's less of it. You want more sauce, you can add another bottle of beer and 1/2 cup broth before you start boiling it down. The beef is almost as falling apart, it required more attention during cooking, and it does need to meld overnight. Still, it's darned good to come home to the next day.
Since then, my way of making Carbonnade has evolved further. In search of a more pure beef/onion/beer experience, I made several changes to my approach, although I'm still using that reduction pattern as a basis, since it requires no flour to thicken the sauce.
The first thing I noted was that when I use flank steak, sliced about 1/8" or 3/16" thick, I get better penetration of the beer flavor into the meat. The second thing I noted is that this meat falls apart faster.
So, start by seasoning the sliced meat with salt (if you use it) and pepper. I like a lot of freshly ground black pepper with my beef in this dish.
Then sear the meat in butter. You want to cook it until it has a nice brown outside and it's cooked all the way through (rare is fine, but be sure to get the outside nice and brown). Put the meat aside in a bowl.
Caramelize the onions now. I have decided that white onions, with their slightly stronger flavor, work best in this dish. For a normal sized flank steak, I'll use two large white onions, divided as follows: 1 1/2 onions sliced 1/8" thick and sauted. When the onions are all wilted, I take about 1/4 of them out and put them in the bowl with the meat. Then turn the heat down and caramelize the rest of those suckers. If you are in a hurry, you can use a little brown sugar to kickstart the caramelization. Or you can do it the slow old fashioned way.
When they are nice and deeply brown, pour a bottle of ale into the pan and turn the heat up. Stir around to get all the brown stuff off the bottom. Then sprinkle it all with a tiny bit of crushed thyme and put the reserved meat and onions back in the pan. Add about 1 cup of the best beef broth you can find and boil until it's all reduced. The caramelized onions will have dissolved into the sauce, and there will be bare traces of the ones you reserved. Around the time that the sauce is halfway reduced, I like to add about 1 TBSP double concentrated tomato paste, to help thicken and deepen the color of the sauce.
While the sauce is reducing, slice that remaining 1/2 an onion. You want these slices really thin. paper thin if you can, certainly no more than 1/16" thick. When the sauce looks done, stir in the raw onion, and cover the pan tightly. Remove from the heat. Let it sit for 15 minutes or so without removing the lid.
This stew is good right away, and sublime the next day after being in the refrigerator and then reheated. Serve it with spaetzle and sour cream.
So what's different? Well, three things, each of which made the stew better.
1. Using flank steak, which falls apart better and also absorbs the beer flavor better.
2. Caramelizing the onions after searing the meat, so that the brown stuff from the meat searing gets onto the onions.
3. Steaming the thin onions at the end. This means that the same onion is there in three forms in the finished stew. The caramelized ones are basically absorbed into the sauce, the sauteed ones are still visible but help thicken the sauce, and the steamed ones give you a bit of noticeable onion in the finished dish.
It's not all that Belgian anymore, really, but it sure is good. By cutting back on ingredients and focusing on the three main flavors, this version of the stew depends more on the beer than on anything else. I generally use Belgian ale (Duval, if I have any, or some Belgian-style ale if not). I've made it with Quebecois ale, and micro brewery porters. Both are very good, but again, not so Belgian.
My next hope is to make a Vaca Frita recipe that tastes great but doesn't piss me off entirely every time I make it.
