@TheLibrarian28@pilgrim
You guys are giving me the giggles about your safaris to Richmond and Mortlake. London is a huge multi-layered city with lots of villages. Richmond is considered one of the poshest boroughs and just 40 mins by tube (considering how huge London is, not a great trek) from, say, Westminster. Kew Gardens, one of London’s prime tourist attractions is there, Richmond Park is one of the best parks in London, a lot of expat Americans of the richer variety live there, just next to Hampton Court (another major tourist attraction).
I lived in the even more picturesque Hampstead which many tourists also would consider off the beaten path but not so for Londoners. It took me 30 minutes to get to Richmond by the North London line, 30 minutes to get to my uni near the Aldwych. Hardly enough time to figure out more than 2 or 3 answers in The Guardian’s cryptic crossword.
We spent much time in Hampstead. I jokingly suggested starting a Sunday afternoon mobile dog wash business to take care of all those muddy pups coming home off the heath.
And Islington. And Bermondsey. We made good use of our tube passes.
But how did you find Mortlake? (Barnes, of course, is a different story.)
While gullasch can most certainly taste excellent and deep and rich, the extra marinating process the meat goes through in a BB and the mix of mirepoix vegetables takes the BB to the next level.
The bottle of red wine will add that extra balance, richness and elegance to a BB, that a gullasch in my opinion lacks.
There are quite a few marinated beef Gulasch recipes online, especially German recipes. Maybe the answer to a better Gulasch is to marinate first. Any beef Gulasch I’ve made has included a mirepoix.
But of course, but the classic Gullasch recipe does not call for marinating the beef and most certainly not marinating the beef in a bottle of rich red wine, like you do with a BB.
If you do the same steps as in a BB, only the red bell pepper, cream and the paprika will differentiate the two recipes from each other and they will start to taste quite similar.
If you do marinate the beef in a gullasch, what do you use for the marinade ?
Gullasch does not call for neither wine nor beer marinating, but I do make my gullasch with a bit of dry vermouth, but I don’t marinate the beef beforehand, but If I was going to, I might use beer instead of wine to give the gullasch a different balance than in a BB.
I’m all for not following recipes and make a recipe your own - but the danger here is if you alter too many steps in a recipe, you risk the recipe will turn into something completely different than the original recipe.
I am probably less of a stickler when it comes to cooking than you are. I would reduce the amount of water to turn that marinated beef gulaschsuppe into marinated beef gulasch ste
There are marinated beef gulasch stew recipes online, but most look like home cooks’ recipes. I’d
A tangent:
Rheinland, Alsace and Lorraine have a long tradition of marinating meat before stewing or braising the meat. Baeckeoffe, Sauerbraten, etc.
We all have different tastebuds - taste is highly subjective.
I’m not a guy who follows recipes to a tee, I follow a recipe once or twice, then alter it to my own preferences.
But reducing a soup down to a stew for me would seem to stretch it a bit too far.
Stews and soups are like sister and brother, but still they are very different.
What to me makes BB a more elegant stew, actually to me the most elegant tasting stew out there, is that you don’t add cream to it. You add cream or milk to a gullasch, and while it definitely tastes good, it’s a short cut to a better more round taste.
In a BB everything is reduced down over time in a slow process, which makes the taste of a BB deeper and richer in flavour than any other stew I’ve tried.
BB is like a slowly reduced powerhouse sauce with added ingredients.
The adding cream to gulasch must be a regional thing.
I have not seen cream added to a German , Austrian or Hungarian gulasch. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. It probably does. I just have never seen it in a German or Hungarian recipe or restaurant.
Stroganoff has cream or sour cream, and paprikash usually has sour cream unless it’s a kosher paprikash.
I realize you live in Europe, so you probably are not familiar with our cheesy TV chef named Rachel Ray. She has a dish that is halfway between stew and soup, and it’s called Stoop.
There also is a canned food in North America called Chunky, and its commercials from the 80s and 90s were on the topic of whether it was a soup or a meal, whether to use a spoon or fork.
It’s the soup that eats like a meal.
Maybe North Americans don’t distinguish as much between Stew and Soup. I don’t know. I regularly turn soups into stews and vice versa.
While i generally follow your thought on Boeuf Bourguignon, I don’t see its singularity from other proper braises. I do quite the same thing with short ribs and ox tails with similarly rich results. For me, it’s a process, not just a single regional dish.
Do you also marinate the short ribs in vegetables and red wine overnight ?
I braise my short ribs in beer and beef broth only half way up, but I don’t have all the mirepoix vegetables added to my short ribs, but you can of course do it, if you feel it enhances the taste of the short ribs, but then you make the braise into a stew with all the stuff added to the short ribs.
But braised short ribs to me is not a stew and BB is not a braise.
To me Coq au vin is very close to BB, but BB still has the edge over Coq au Vin, because I simmer the beef for longer and this in my view makes it the richest stew there is out there.
Of course I haven’t tried them all…so you never know.
You’re right - but my aunt has always added cream to her gullasch, so I sort of thought this was the norm for that dish.
I’ve heard of Rachel Ray and seen some of her shows - let’s just say, that I’m not a fan.
I started following chefs on Youtube, because I was tired of the lousy chefs on regular TV.
Talk about oxtail. Years ago, I tasted a ’ Braised Oxtail in Red wine and Port ’ dish prepared by Guy Martin of Grand Vefour. So good, both appearance and taste, that to this date, I can still remember the wow-factor of the first taste. The secret I think was marinating the meat in both spice/aromatic herbs and the 'alcohol ’ for over a day before cooking.
