Beef Bourguignon Recipe

COOK meals are perfect for when you fancy a night off cooking … something even the most passionate home cook needs now and again. But how do our prices compare with making it yourself?

We followed our recipe for two for Beef Bourguignon at home and found it was more expensive getting the ingredients from the supermarket.

We based this on checking Sainsbury’s online ingredient prices in October 22 and now we have updated to most recent prices in February 22, for a two portion recipe. We didn't include ingredients we had in the fridge or kitchen cupboard (including any alcohol) and used the smallest available amounts of what we needed.

Our shopping list for the recipe below included:  top rump beef, chestnut mushrooms, rashers smoked streaky bacon, small onion, pearl onions, beef stock, tomato purée, redcurrant jelly, thyme sprig, rosemary sprig. Everything else we had already.

If you'd prefer to make it yourself, our recipe for a 2 portion is below.  As freezer connoisseurs we'd always recommend batch cooking for the absolute best value recipe - scroll to the end for some tips.

Beef Bourguignon Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1⁄1½ tbsp rapeseed oil
• 400g top rump beef
• 65g chestnut mushrooms
• 2 rashers smoked streaky bacon
• ½ small onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 6 pearl onions
• 125ml red wine
• 250ml beef stock
• ½ tbsp tomato purée
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp redcurrant jelly
• 1 thyme sprig
• 1 rosemary sprig
• Pinch plain flour
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbsp demerara sugar
• salt and pepper

Method: 

STEP 1. Cut the beef into bite-sized chunks and roll in plain white flour.

STEP 2. Heat about 3tbsp of rapeseed oil and start to fry the beef - you'll probably need to cook it in 2-3 batches. Fry until sealed and coloured, and then leave to drain as you fry off the rest.

STEP 3. In the same pan add the finely chopped onion, garlic, rosemary, thyme, bay leaves and black pepper and sweat on a low heat for 5 minutes.

STEP 4. Return the sealed beef to the pan, add the tomato purée and half of the red wine, along with enough stock to just cover the beef. Bring to the boil. Pop it in the oven at 150°C / gas 2 for approximately 2 hours, until the meat is tender.

STEP 5. Peel the pearl onions and mix with a marinade of salt, balsamic vinegar and demerara sugar, and place in a roasting tray and cook until soft, either over a low heat or in the oven. In your frying pan, heat up some oil and fry the chopped bacon until it's lightly golden. Remove the bacon, leaving it to one side for the moment while you fry the mushrooms in the same pan. Fry for 3 minutes and leave to drain.

STEP 6. When the meat is tender, add the cooked bacon, pearl onions and mushrooms, along with the rest of the red wine. Add the redcurrant jelly and put it back into the oven for a further 30 minutes.

Batch it up!

To save money, batch cooking is the way forward – it’s essentially why we can make recipes cheaper than you can at home.

With a bit of forethought, the right kit, space in the freezer and a few hours set aside, you can batch cook yourself by scaling up the quantities above.

A few tips:

• Clean COOK trays can be really useful. Make your portion, freeze in the tray, then, once frozen, pop out and wrap in cling film to store (or, if you have lots of trays, just store in the tray).
• To reheat from frozen, pop the frozen block into one of our ceramic dishes and cook at about 170C until piping hot.

Shop Beef Bourguignon

Shop Great Value COOK Nights