Philosophy of Food, Issue #011: Carbonnade a la Creole

At last.  It is time to fully utilize my experience making stoofvlees to engineer a dish that is both wholly mine and worthy of being made for something other than a quick dinner.

The dish is essentially stoofvlees, with a few andouille thrown in and the sweet-and-sour European spices replaced with a considerable wallop of creole seasoning.

The Ingredients
-1 lb stew meat.
-2 large yellow onions, chopped.
-2 slices of bacon, chopped.
-1/2 teaspoon brown sugar.
-1/2 teaspoon all-purpose flour.
-2 bay leaves.
-2 brat-sized andouille sausages, chopped.
-12 oz beer (I recommend a Munich style lager, such as Abita Amber).
-16 oz beef broth.
-1 teaspoon creole seasoning.
-1 tablespoon mustard (optional).

The Spice must flow!

Pictured: sweat and tears. . . mostly the later.

I wish I could get andouille from back home.  This stuff is okay, but not quite spicy enough.

MEAT!

The Process
First prepare a pot with a minimal amount of olive oil.  Then add the beef and brown.  Once the beef is browned, remove it to a bowl and deglaze the pot with a bit of beef broth, scraping off any beef reside with a wooden spoon and transfering it and all broth to the beef bowl.  Fry up the chopped bacon in the pot.  Don't cook it to crisp, only until it is fully cooked.  Remove the bacon to the beef bowl but leave all the grease.

At this point, add the chopped onions.  Once the onions start to turn just a little golden, add the brown sugar.  After around fifteen minutes of cooking, the onions should be more or less fully caramelized.  At this point add the flour and the meat (beef, bacon, and andouille sausage).  Pour the beer over the mix.  Once beef foam has dissipated, add the beef broth, creole seasoning, and bay leaves.  A special note, I made my own creole seasoning instead of using Tony Chacherie's like I usually do.

Bring the carbonnade to a boil and cover.  Boil it gently for about two hours, or until the onions have been fully disintegrated and the broth has cooked down to a gravy.  Add in mustard and parsley and serve over rice, noodles, or potatoes.

Double bubble toil and trouble. . .

The Results
I'm going to admit that I didn't go with my own beer recommendation, first off.  I used Franziskaner Dunkel, a dark German wheat beer, because it was what I had in my fridge at the time.  Also, I served it over rice.

A full tablespoon of creole seasoning isn't enough.  I might try two or even three next time.  It wasn't bad as is, but it definitely wasn't as spicy as I wanted.

Otherwise it was good.  Very much the same consistency as the stoofvlees I've made in the past, though a bit less sweet.  I might consider using more brown sugar to compensate for using a beer other than Leffe.

Here's how it was when it was about done.

In a bowl over rice.

At the table with a homebrew.