This Hearty Beef Stew Is French Country Food at Its Finest

For the last several weeks, my house has been filled with the aroma of delicious beef slowly braising in full-bodied red wine. It’s smelled so much like big, bold reds lately that my family is now insisting I take a little break from cooking with wine altogether. The reason for this is that I’ve been perfecting my bold, full flavored Gascogne-style beef and root vegetable stew—and I’ve loved every minute of it, no matter what my family says.

The Gascogne region is in Southwest France, tucked between Bordeaux and Spain. The region is popular among culinary aficionados for its earthy flavors, duck and goose foie gras, and other robust, lavish dishes. Because the region is so well known for its poultry, especially duck, it’s not hard to see why it has a reputation for rich food. As with most regional cuisine, you cook with what’s local. In the case of Gascogne, that means duck fat instead of olive oil, tannic and exceptionally bold red wines, dried prunes from abundant plum trees, and the uniquely nutty and caramel-flavored brandy called Armagnac. All of these flavors are incorporated into this beef stew.

Tips for Success When Cooking the Stew

The technique for making this stew is fairly straightforward: Sear the chunks of beef and render bacon to develop a rich fond, add aromatics such as garlic, carrots, and parsnips for earthy flavor, deglaze with delicious Armagnac, add the wine and broth, then cook at a low temperature for several hours until flavorful and tender. A handful of chopped prunes stud the stew for a welcome sweetness that complements the acidic wine. 

Heat management is key throughout the recipe. When searing the meat, make sure the pan is hot enough to actually create a crust on the beef but avoid too high of a temperature or you could scorch the pan. Similarly, cook the stew in a very low oven to ensure the muscle fibers and connective tissue in the beef chuck slowly transform into meltingly soft and moist gelatin. It’s that gelatin that makes the meat still seem moist and tender even after the long cooking.

The Best Wine Options for Gascogne-Style Beef Stew

The challenge with developing a recipe like this is selecting the right ingredients. Daube de Boeuf à la Gasconne reflects the rich, earthy, and bold flavors notable in the cuisine there. The major question is when to stick with traditional ingredients that define the recipe, and when changes are needed to make it approachable for home cooks like me who live outside of France.

The main ingredient in question here is the wine. The right wine in this recipe is quite important (a full bottle is used, after all!). Traditionally Madiran, a red wine from the Gascogne region, is used in the stew. It’s a tannic red wine made with tannat grapes, which produce a very strikingly bold flavor. I actually found it difficult to enjoy drinking this wine, but it hits the right complex, bold flavor when simmered with the beef in the stew. 

But Madiran can sometimes be challenging to find in US wine stores, so I also tested with more common French red wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy. And while these wines can certainly produce a tasty stew, these stews didn’t feel quite rich or complex enough when compared to the stew made with Madiran. A solid wine option, and far easier to find, is Cahors, which is predominantly made with malbec grapes. If Madiran and Cahors are unavailable, you can substitute a good quality malbec wine in a pinch.

Recommendations for a Balanced Stew

Looking through old cookbooks, especially Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire, I found that a daube was traditionally made by marinating beef in red wine and aromatics. This is one area I do think it’s worth breaking from tradition. In my tests, cooking wine-marinated beef resulted in an overly boozy flavored stew. 

I do, however, recommend following the common traditional method of letting the stew cool down and then chill overnight in the refrigerator before serving. In my tests, I found this produced a richer, more complex flavor compared to eating the stew when freshly prepared. I know it can be hard to plan in advance and to wait a full day before tucking into the stew, but in my opinion, if you are going to splurge on a good bottle of wine and duck fat for the dish, it would be a shame to not let it develop as much flavor as possible. I found that refrigerating the stew overnight deepens the flavors and allows them to marry. 

When you’re ready to serve the reserved stew, simply spoon off any residual layer of fat from the top before reheating. You will be rewarded with a lusciously rich dish that’s decidedly rustic yet complex, earthy, and delicious enough to mirror the traditional flavors of Gascogne.

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