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carbonnade a la flamande - i want a good recipe

5K views 18 replies 8 participants last post by  koukouvagia 
#1 ·
Anyone make a carbonnade a la flamande - dark belgian beer stew (or, if you prefer, belgian dark beer stew), since both the stew and the beer are dark)?
 

i love it and would love a good recipe, like i had in belgium in my one trip

i find many contradictory indications, with brown sugar, without brown sugar, etc. 

thanks
 
#2 ·
I have a recipe but it is at home. When I get home I will pull it up and transcribe it. It has been years since I made it, but I don't recall brown sugar. In my memory banks it seems that it called for caramelizing onions for a bit of sweetness. For what it is worth, the gentleman that taught this particular dish to me, about 30 years ago, was from Belgium.
 
#4 ·
Thanks Cheflayne.  I hope you find it for me, but also for yourself!

i rarely like stewed meat, but this one is different. 
 
#6 ·
Hello Siduri, I'm sure you will love this recipe!

Carbonade flamande (we call it "Vlaamse stoverij")

First of all, like many other stews, there are as many variations on this dish as there are cooks. It may have much to do with the availability of ingredients and the creativity of the cooks.

However, only these few ingredients are an absolute must;
- dark brown beer, preferably not too sweet. In my country we use beerstyles like either "Oud Bruin" (old brown), "Vlaams Rood" (flemish red) or "Abdijbier" (abbye beer).
- mustard, the Dijon version.
- thyme and a bay leaf





So which beer to choose? It has to be dark beer! I would suggest to go for the dark Leffe which is widely available in many countries or any dark abbye beer. If you can find Rodenbach, which is a "flemish red", then you have the very best of all to make this dish...

Usually we use the "tougher" cuts of beef, fit to be braised a long time. However, it's not unusual to use pork and even better, pork cheeks!

The recipe;

Best to use these two; a large frying pan and of course a large stew pot. Note for cast-iron stew pots; this method of using a separate frying pan will avoid to heat your nice Le Creuset's and other cast-iron pots to temperatures that will damage the enamel layer!
- Chop onion and start sweating on low fire in the stew pot. Add a few cloves of garlic if you wish (I do, but it's not a standard ingredient).
- In the frying pan, on high fire; sear the meat in small batches on all sides untill nicely browned. This is where a lot goes wrong; you only brown a few chunks of meat at a time on high fire and secondly you need to take your time for it. The color on the meat will render a darker stew which is highly wanted. Season each batch of meat with s&p and add each batch of browned meat to the stew pot on top of the onions.
- When all the browned batches of meat are in the stew pot, sprinkle a good tbsp of plain flour over it, turn the heat higher, mix both onions and meat gently. The flour needs to cook for a while.
- Back to the frying pan which now looks very darkbrown from frying the meat. Open up a bottle of the beer you chose and pour it in. Use a wooden spoon to scratch all bits from the bottom of the pan while heating the beer. Add this to the stew pot. Fill the bottle of beer with plain water and add that too. Posh chefs add beef stock instead of water. The beer needs to be diluted like this to avoid too strong beer flavour.
- add all other ingredients; sprig of thyme, bay leaf, I add a few roughly chopped carrots which are not standard ingredients in this dish. I also add a tbsp of dark brown sugar but you can use "appelstroop" which is kind of a very thick apple syrup.
Finally, spread a generous layer of mustard on a slice of white bread and put it on top of the preparation. The bread will slowly disintegrate when cooking and thicken the sauce.







- put all of this on low fire to braise for in general some 90-120 minutes. Just check with the point of a knife for doneness. Add 15 minutes each time it seems underdone.
- very important; at the end of the cooking time, you need to taste for seasoning. Not only s&p but mainly for the balance. If it's too sweet, add a tbsp of wine vinegar.



Enjoy!

 
 
#8 ·
Very nice Chris.  Thanks.  I've found lots of recipes but none with the bread.  Interesting.  As soon as i can get the meat, i'll make it. 

Thanks also French fries.  Interesting to use gingerbread.  adds the sugar, a spice and a thickener at once. 
 
#9 ·
I made Chris's vlaamse stoverij - (flemish stew, i take it is the literal translation.  funny how flemish sounds so different from english, but you can reconstruct it once you know what it might mean). 

Wow

My husband, who loved it in Belgium, said it was better than what we had at the restaurant there.  I usually don;t like stews, but this one is different - no tomato, warm, complex and comforting flavors. that bit of sweetness, the particular consistency due to the bread disintegrating in it, the whole thing. 

I added the brown sugar to the onions, to give them more chance to caramelize and get more flavor

Thank you very much.  It was perfect
 
#11 ·
I cheated, and stirred it in a little, but it had almost completely disintegrated.  The bread i used was very tough, chewy bread, though. 
 
#12 ·
I suggest using shin of beef or ox cheek chunks, marinated in the beer, some red wine vinegar, bay, thyme, onion, carrot, celery and leek overnight. Strain the lot, separate the meat from the veg, dry the meat and brown in the frying pan and sweat the veg in the braising pan. Continue with ChrisBelgium's recipe.

This will give you incredibly tender meat and lots of depth.

BTW, it's basically a regional variation on the classic French beef stew, which uses red wine instead of beer and no vinegar.
 
 
#13 ·
.... I will have to try this dijon bread thing, does it gets stirred in at some point?
Hello Koukou! Indeed, I should have mentioned that towards the end of the preparation the bread gets stirred in. It should have disappeared entirely at the end of the cooking time and the sauce should have thickened nicely because of it. Also, the mustard layered slice of bread is put in the stew mostly with the mustard facing the stew.

It's a good thing to check on the stew regularly and play with the lid of the pot, like opening it a while if necessary, to allow the sauce to reduce during the cooking time.

@Recky; stews like this come in endless variations and I'm sure your suggestion is worth trying. However it ressembles more -or- is a clever combination with a French stew originating from the lovely Provence region, namely "boeuf en daube" or "daube de boeuf", where the meat is indeed marinated before cooking it (sometimes in a typical clay pot, called daube).

Even another French stew, "boeuf Bourguignon" is such a fantastic alternative, this time using baby onions, bacon and mushrooms and wine of course instead of beer.

@Siduri; I have to remember to try caramelizing the onion with the Sugar like you did. Seems like a very good idea!
 
#14 · (Edited)
Truly a nice recipe Chris, one I would like to keep.

I was reading an article on-line about emulsifiers ( I noticed the application of mustard) and this is what it said :

"The only other emulsifying agent that is widely used in the
professional kitchen is mustard. Mustard stabilizes a sauce much the
same way that starches do, by intervening between droplets which are
trying to cohere together and separate from the emulsion.
Additionally, mustard seeds release a gentle gum, or gelling agent,
when wetted.

Prepared mustards are also used as emulsifiers, to good effect. Not
only do they have the same properties as the freshly-ground seeds,
they also themselves are generally manufactured with emulsifying
agents to stabilize them, hence the prevalance of mustard as an
ingredient in mayonnnaise.

Mustard, whether dry or prepared, is readily available to the
commercial kitchen and is inexpensive. It makes a long-lasting,
stable emulsion, which is a good thing. It also, however, has a
potent and pungent flavour which is not always desirable in the end
product. It is, therefore, a popular and useful ingredient, though of
limited versatility."

Bread included as a thickener .

Source:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/588429.html
 
#15 ·
I made your recipe, Chris, and it was wonderful. Here is the picture


Messy presentation, i didn;t try to fix it up. The taste couldn't have been improved on with presentation anyway /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif

Thanks Chris
 
#16 · (Edited)
Wow Siduri, that looks very good. Your braising liquid seems to have just the right color, shine and thickness... it's funny how you can almost tell from the photograph that it must have tasted really, really good.

As for your plating... well, what can I say... It reminds me of my plating. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/lol.gif
 
#17 ·
Well, it wasn't an attempt at plating, it was my dish as i served myself and remembered to take a picture!  I;ve tried to make this many times, but this time it came out like i had it in Brussels about ten years ago. 

Good recipe!
 
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