Venison Bourguinonne (aka Venison Stew)
I have two cookbooks from the Hunters for the Hungry organization and wanted to try some recipes out of them. I asked Chris to bring home some venison meat that I could get creative with during this hunting season. Last week, he brought home a hindquarter for me to do with as I wished…after asking him to please cut the meat into cubes ,I placed it in our deep freezer. Then the hunt began!! I scoured my cookbooks for the perfect recipe and found this one for Venison Bourguinonne that I was excited to try.
Yummy! Yummy! Yummy! The finished stew provides you with tender, melt in your mouth, cubes of meat that taste entirely like beef stew. I was amazed at how delicious it was when I took the first bite and extremely proud of myself for cooking such a wonderful stew. I adapted the recipe a little by omitting pearl onions and substituting an additional diced onion as my local grocery store doesn’t carry the pearl ones. I used beef broth to thin the mixture when it began sticking early on in the cooking time. The original recipe claims you can transfer mixture to a slow cooker but I eliminated that as I didn’t want to lose the flavor bits from the cooking of the bacon, venison and veggies at the beginning. I may try adding extra carrots, potatoes and celery next time to really bump up the veggies in the finished dish. Substitute cubed beef if you are unable to find and/or don’t want to use venison.
¼ pound of bacon
3 pounds venison
1 large carrot, peeled & sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, diced
2 beef bouillon cubes, dissolved in 10oz hot water
1 can condensed beef broth
1 ½ cups dry red wine
1 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf, broken into tiny pieces
½ pound pearl onions or 1 additional large onion, diced
1 package sliced mushrooms
3 Tablespoons flour (any type, thickener)
⅛ teaspoon pepper
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon tomato paste
Cook bacon in large Dutch oven until crisp; really cook it well done as you’ll be adding it back to stew later. Remove cooked bacon from pot. Blot venison cubes with paper towels to remove any moisture, add to pot and brown on all sides. Don’t worry about cooking cubes through as you’ll be adding back to the stew and cooking slowly for 6 hours. Remove cubes to plate. Add diced onion and carrot and minced garlic to pot; brown. Mix flour, salt and pepper together until blended. Add dissolved bouillon cubes; mix well. Pour mixture into pot; stirring to combine all ingredients. Return browned meat and bacon to pot. Add wine, tomato paste, thyme, bay leaf and pearl onions and/or additional diced onion to pot. Stir gently; cover and cook on medium low heat (simmer) for 6 hours; stirring occasionally. Add beef broth, a little at a time, when you notice mixture sticking to bottom of pot during the first 4 hours of cooking. One hour before serving add thinly sliced mushrooms to pot. Serve with sliced bread, crackers and/or fresh cornbread. Enjoy!
Recipe adapted from Hunters for the Hungry Cookbook 1.
Tags: Agtually, Auto, beef bouillon cubes, Draft, stew, tablespoon tomato paste, Venison, venison bourguinonne