Hearty Mushroom Bourguignon Recipe

Beef Bourguignon, or Beef Burgundy in English, is a classic French stew that Julia Child taught the American public to make on the very first episode of her popular cooking show in 1963. Red wine from the French region of Bourgogne (Burgundy) is the ingredient that sets this dish apart from regular beef stew.

Recipe developer Michelle Bottalico has created a vegetarian version of the French classic. This hearty and delicious mushroom Bourguignon recipe preserves the essential ingredients of the original: olive oil, butter, carrots, white onions, pearl onions, red wine, broth, and spices. Bottalico has also loosely applied the cooking techniques of the meat-based version to this mushroom one. The resulting stew has a surprisingly deep, rich flavor and complexity you may not have expected from a mushroom dish.

There's more good news — the beef version is a rather long and involved recipe that requires extra steps for cooking bacon and beef, a lot of straining and switching pots, and about 4 hours of time. This recipe uses one pot, doesn't need to go in the oven, and cooks up in just one hour. It can also easily be made vegan. If you follow a vegetarian or vegan diet or simply like to try new things, this mushroom Bourguignon is an impressive recipe to add to your repertoire.

For this recipe, you will need two kinds of mushrooms: dried porcini and fresh cremini mushrooms. Grab some olive oil and butter for your fats, and carrots, white onion, garlic, and pearl onions for your vegetables. Make sure to thaw the onions first if they are sold frozen. You'll need mushroom broth, tomato paste, and flour, as well as red wine, which is the characteristic ingredient of this stew. However, if you don't want to use alcohol, you can substitute additional broth. Have some herbs and spices on hand: dried thyme, dried oregano, salt, and black pepper. Lastly, the recipe calls for egg noodles and minced parsley for serving.

Place the porcini in a small bowl and cover them with ⅔ cup hot water. Set aside.

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil on medium-high in a large saucepan. Add the pearl onions and cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove them from the pan and set aside.

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in the pan, add the cremini mushrooms in a single layer, and stir quickly to coat. Cook them for 6-7 minutes until browned. Do not stir often. Remove them from the pan and set aside.

Add 1 tablespoon of oil, lower the heat to medium, add the carrots and white onion and saute for 6-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and saute for 2 more minutes.

Meanwhile, strain and roughly chop the porcini, reserving the liquid.

Add the wine, broth, strained porcini water, chopped porcini, tomato paste, thyme, oregano, salt, and pepper, and bring the liquid to a boil. Lower the heat immediately and let it simmer on low for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, use a fork to mix the flour and 1 tablespoon of butter into a paste.

Add the flour and butter mixture to the pot and stir well until it's evenly incorporated.

Return the pearl onions and cremini mushrooms to the pot and simmer for an additional 10 minutes until the contents reach the consistency of a thick stew. Taste and adjust for salt and pepper.

Serve immediately over egg noodles with a sprinkling of fresh parsley.

It's possible to substitute some of the ingredients but keep in mind that this recipe has some essential elements that make it what it is. Namely, the mushrooms, onions, carrots, and especially the red wine are always found in the traditional version. That said, if you don't have some of the ingredients or you prefer to make some swaps, you can do so. The recipe calls for cremini and porcini mushrooms, but as long you're sure to include some kinds of mushrooms, you can mix and match as you like. White button, portobello, oyster, or shiitake mushrooms are all good options.

Pearl onions may be hard to find in some areas, and if so they can simply be left out. The other onion used –  white onion — has a stronger flavor, but yellow or red onions would also work. You can opt for vegetable broth instead of mushroom broth if desired, and you can use other kinds of wheat flour if you don't have all-purpose flour. Anyone following a gluten-free diet can thicken the stew with cornstarch. Just substitute the same amount of cornstarch for the flour.

It's easy to make this recipe vegan by replacing the butter with extra olive oil. Just check the kind of red wine you use, because some kinds may not be vegan. Lastly, this stew can be served over mashed potatoes if you don't like egg noodles.

Mushroom Bourguignon is a vegetarian stew adapted from the classic French dish beef Bourguignon. Red wine is an essential ingredient because it's what differentiates beef Bourguignon from an ordinary beef stew. The word Bourguignon means a dish from the French region of Bourgogne, which is called Burgundy in English. This is why you'll hear of beef Burgundy or mushroom Burgundy in English — it doesn't refer to the color of the stew (the French word for the color burgundy is actually bordeaux) but to the fact that it's traditionally made with French wine from Burgundy — more precisely red wine since the region also produces white wine.

So to keep the spirit of this dish, red wine is an important ingredient. However, we know that some people would rather not use wine, and if we're being honest, the fact that we're using mushrooms instead of beef means we've already made a substitution for another one of the essential ingredients. In that case, you can substitute the wine with an equal amount of vegetable broth or additional mushroom broth. Keep in mind that the flavor and color will shift a bit from the original, but it will still be a tasty stew.