Carbonnade Flamande

Name: Carbonnade Flamande
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 3 h
Total time: 3 h 30 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Ghent & Flanders
Ingredients: 1.2 kg beef chuck or shin, in large cubes; 2 tsp salt; 1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper; 1.2 kg onions, thickly sliced; 60 g butter; 2 tbsp oil; 500 ml dark Belgian abbey or brown ale; 200 ml beef stock; 2 tbsp dark brown sugar; 2 tbsp red wine vinegar; 3 bay leaves; 4 sprigs thyme; 4 juniper berries, crushed; 2 thick slices of country bread; 3 tbsp strong Dijon mustard; 1 handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped; 1 kg chips, to serve

Flanders' beef braised in dark abbey beer with a weight of onions, sweetened with brown sugar and thickened by a mustard-smeared slice of bread

Origin: Bruges, Ghent & Flanders

From the journey of Barley.

Carbonnade flamande is beef braised in beer, and the beer is not a substitution for wine but the whole identity of the dish. Where Burgundy reaches for red wine, Flanders reaches for a dark abbey or brown ale, and the sweet malt of the beer, the caramelised onions, and a spoonful of brown sugar are balanced against a slug of vinegar and the sharpness of mustard. Belgian brewing is the reason the dish exists in this form. The country's beer culture was inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016, and it covers a genuinely unusual range: the Trappist breweries, the abbey ales, and above all the lambics of the Senne valley south-west of Brussels, which are fermented spontaneously by wild yeasts carried on the air rather than by pitched culture. Barley malt sits underneath all of it, and the choice of beer changes the finished pot more than the choice of cut does. The thickening is the technique worth learning. A thick slice of bread is spread generously with mustard and laid mustard side down on the surface of the stew, where it dissolves over the long cooking and binds the sauce. There is no flour and no roux; the bread does everything, and the mustard disappears into a background sharpness that keeps the sweetness in check. The onions go in by weight rather than by number, roughly as much as the beef, and are browned properly first. A carbonnade made with a modest quantity of onion is thin and sweet, and a good one is dark, glossy, and faintly bitter at the back from the beer. It is eaten with chips and, in Flanders, with more of the same beer.

Ingredients

Beef

1.2 kg beef chuck or shin, in large cubes
2 tsp salt
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper

Onions

1.2 kg onions, thickly sliced

To cook

60 g butter
2 tbsp oil

Braise

500 ml dark Belgian abbey or brown ale
200 ml beef stock
2 tbsp dark brown sugar
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
3 bay leaves
4 sprigs thyme
4 juniper berries, crushed

To thicken

2 thick slices of country bread
3 tbsp strong Dijon mustard

To finish

1 handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped

To serve

1 kg chips, to serve

Method

Dry the beef thoroughly and season it, then brown it hard in the oil in batches in a heavy casserole and set it aside.
Brown the meat properly and in batches. A crowded pan steams the beef grey and the finished sauce will have no depth to it.
Melt the butter in the same pot and cook the onions over a medium heat for twenty-five minutes, until deeply golden and collapsing.
Use as much onion as beef by weight. This is the proportion the dish depends on and it looks like far too much in the pan.
Return the beef, add the sugar and vinegar, and let them bubble for a minute.
Pour in the beer and the stock, add the bay, thyme, and juniper, and bring to a bare simmer.
Spread the bread slices thickly with mustard and lay them mustard side down on the surface of the stew.
Cover and cook in a 150°C oven for two and a half hours, without stirring.
The bread will have dissolved by the end. Stir it through at that point and it thickens the sauce; there is no flour in a carbonnade and none is wanted.
Check the seasoning, which should land between sweet and sour with the beer's bitterness underneath, and adjust with a little more sugar or vinegar.
If the sauce is thin, uncover and reduce it on the hob for fifteen minutes.
Scatter with parsley and serve with chips, and with a glass of the beer it was cooked in.

Notes

The beer is the dish: use a dark Belgian abbey, brown, or dubbel ale, and avoid anything hopped for bitterness, since a modern IPA turns the pot acrid over three hours. Equal weights of onion and beef. The mustard bread is the thickener and goes on face down. Do not stir during the braise. Balance sweet against sour at the end rather than at the start. Like most braises it is better on the second day, and Flemish households make it a day ahead as a matter of course.

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control