February 1, 2025
Carbonnade a la Flamande, or Belgian Beef, Beer, and Onion Stew. It’s been a long time since we did this! We use Cook’s Illustrated’s recipe: https://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/4968-carbonnade-a-la-flamande-belgian-beef-beer-and-onion-stew. This dish relies on a big Belgium ale.
4:32 PM
We hadn’t even finished getting everything together and Livingstone, the eager quality control inspector, was already at work!
4:33 PM
The Mise en Place. This is really just gathering the pieces together, we haven’t actually prepared them as you do for an actual Mise en Place. We had to do this because the prep time is so long that everything had to go back into the fridge while Bill prepped and browned the chuck and Martin sliced the onions. The garlic isn’t even trimmed! The Chimay ale is one of the best Belgium ales, actually made by Trappist Monks (https://chimay.com/us/taste-our/beers/)
4:39 PM
Livingstone continues working! Now you can see that he’s just going after the fat.
5:06 PM
Livingstone QCs the onions.
5:07 PM
Bill browns the 1st batch of chuck.
8:18 PM
It’s done, 3 hours after starting to brown the 1at batch, a little over 2 hours in the oven.
8:22 PM
The final Quality Control Inspection . . . And it’s approved!
You didn’t think we did all that work for one dinner! We packaged this just 2 days later on Monday, February 3, 2025. We got five meals out of it. The three up front will be frozen, the red one will be Thursday, February 6 2025’s dinner.