Pot Roast Beef a la Bourguignon with creamy mashed potatoes

This is a great warming dish with the flavours of the French classic Boeuf Bourguignon paired with delicious Scottish Galloway Beef – a real Auld Alliance. The joint of Galloway Beef will remain whole and beautifully pink in the middle. Slice and serve with creamy mashed potatoes and lashings of the beautiful rich sauce. Add some green beans on the side for a bit of colour.

Ingredients

For the Pot Roasted Beef

  • 1 Galloway Beef Joint Wrapped in Ayrshire Bacon
  • 8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon or lardons
  • 3 tbsps sunflower oil
  • 2/3 bottle of Aldi French Red Wine
  • 1 onion
  • 2 sticks of celery
  • 6 cloves of garlic
  • 2 bay leaves
  • A good, bushy bunch of thyme
  • Beef stock (use 2 stock pots or 3 rich beef stock cubes)
  • 2 tsps tomato puree
  • 1 packet of shallots
  • 1 packet of small button mushrooms

 

For the Creamy Mashed Potatoes

  • 1 kg Maris Piper potatoes
  • 150g butter
  • 150ml warm milk
Method

Heat the oven to 150C Fan

For the Pot Roasted Beef

Take a large cast iron pan and heat the oil until very hot. Sear the beef joint – browning on all sides. Remove from the pan and keep aside.

Now sauté the finely chopped onion and celery until soft and translucent. Add the garlic and sauté for around a minute before adding the tomato puree and herbs. Cook gently in the pan for 2 minutes, then up the heat and add the red wine and de-glaze the pan. Simmer the wine and reduce by around a third. The add the beef stock dissolved in around 500ml of water. Place the lid on the sauce and cook in the oven for around 30 minutes. At the same time, place the potatoes in the oven to bake.

Now chop the streaky bacon into lardons, peel the shallots and wipe the mushrooms with a damp cloth to ensure they are clean. Take a frying pan and heat to a high temperature. Fry the bacon until the fat has rendered and it is becoming quite crispy. Add the shallots and the mushrooms to the pan and colour on all sides.

Remove the sauce from the oven and place the beef roasting joint and the fried shallot mixture around the side of the casserole. The liquid should come around half of the way up the roasting joint. Remove the lid from the cast iron dish and place back in the oven to cook the meat. This should, take around 45 minutes. If you have a meat thermometer, the internal temperature should reach 55C for medium.  Once the beef is cooked, remove the joint from the sauce and wrap in foil to rest for around 15 minutes (keep the sauce warm on the hob or in the oven).

For the Creamy Mashed Potatoes

Bake the potatoes in the oven for an hour until very soft. Scoop out the flesh and put through a potato ricer or mash with a masher until smooth. Place the mash in a pan and gradually add the butter and warm milk, whisking all the time until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. 

To Serve

Once the beef has rested, slice the whole joint into thin slices and place on top of the sauce. Finish with a little chopped parsley and serve with the creamy mashed potatoes and some green vegetables such as fine French green beans.

Recipe by Jilly McCord.

Watch Jilly demonstrate how to make this recipe at: https://fb.watch/2wi6ycXl6I/