The Extra Step That Keeps Your Beef Bourguignon Perfectly Textured

Beef bourguignon is a dish that has long held the admiration of home cooks around the world. Julia Child, who should certainly be given a lot of credit for bringing this French stew into American kitchens, considered beef bourguignon one of the best beef dishes anywhere in the world. Tender chunks of slow-simmered meat and vegetables alongside the signature pearl onions and a rich red wine gravy make up the bulk of the dish, but there is one other ingredient in most bourguignon recipes that Chef John Politte, founder and host of It's Only Food, thinks deserves a bit of extra care in your recipe: the mushrooms.

"In traditional beef bourguignon recipes," Politte explains, "mushrooms are often cooked along with the other ingredients, allowing them to absorb the flavors of the stew." While this does lead to mushrooms that are richly flavorful, it can also leave them limp and mushy, if you can find them at all. "This prolonged cooking causes the mushrooms to become very soft and sometimes lose their distinct texture, blending into the sauce," he explains.

The solution, however, is a simple one. All you have to do to keep the texture of all of the ingredients on point is add the mushrooms to the beef bourguignon at the end — and cook them separately. "Sautéing mushrooms separately and adding them toward the end," he explains, "will help you avoid sogginess and enjoy their full flavor and texture."

Beef bourguignon recipes typically fall on the complex side, relying on multiple stages of cooking, so adding another step to saute the mushrooms separately might seem like an unnecessary additional burden. Once you try it, however, this beef bourguignon tip will change your tune. A tender sautéed mushroom that still has a bit of toothiness to it coated in that rich, complex gravy is the sort of bite that dreams are made of.

To achieve that perfect bite, however, you also need to make sure that you are choosing a good type of mushroom for the stew. Thankfully, Chef Politte has us covered there as well. "The right mushroom variety and proper cooking technique are key to achieving delicious, firm mushrooms in beef bourguignon," he says, suggesting that cremini, portobello, shiitake, and king oyster mushrooms all fill the role admirably.

Cremini and Portobello mushrooms are quite similar, and are two run-of-the-mill varieties that you are likely familiar with and can certainly find at just about any grocery store. Shiitake mushrooms add an intense savoriness to dishes, but can be more expensive or harder to track down. You can, however, find them dehydrated for reasonable prices, as with this eight-ounce package of dried shiitake mushrooms from ONETANG. King oyster mushrooms are big and meaty, more savory even than shiitakes, and are often sliced into thick steaks and seared. If you really want to capitalize on the mushroom experience in your bourguignon, king oysters are your ideal pick. Either that or you can forego the meat entirely and give a hearty mushroom bourguignon recipe a try.