Venison Bourguignon

Venison Bourguignon is inspired by the classic French bœuf bourguignon. Delicious and surprisingly easy to make at home, my version replaces the traditional beef with chunks of venison. Slow cooked with bacon, red wine, stock, garlic, and herbs, plus mushrooms and whole baby onions, the result is a rich, flavoursome stew.

Served on a heap of creamy mashed potato, with boiled potatoes, buttery pasta, or rice, it’s perfect comfort food or an impressive main course for entertaining.

If you can’t get or don’t like venison, there’s no reason you can’t use beef. But I hope you’ll try this gorgeous stew with wild venison.

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THE INSPIRATION FOR VENISON BOURGUIGNON

According to Larousse Gastronomique (which, despite its idiosyncrasies, is often regarded as the classic culinary reference book), à la bourguignonne can refer to dishes inspired by the regional cooking of Burgundy and a number cooked with red wine. Usually garnished with small onions, button mushrooms and bacon, boeuf bourguignon is the most famous of the latter. [By the way, don’t ask me about the different spellings of this dish. I don’t speak French and have no idea].

In French Provincial Cooking (1960), Elizabeth David says that boeuf bourguignon has long been a popular national dish of ‘housewives and owner-cooks of modest restaurants’ rather than professional chefs. Consequently, there’s no rigid formula with each cook interpreting it according to their own taste.

Which, as far as I’m concerned, gives me carte blanche (that’s about the limit of my French 😁) to call my own version of this fantastic stew Venison Bourguignon.

BEEF OR VENISON?

Although I haven’t tested my recipe with beef, there’s no reason why you couldn’t swap in stewing beef instead of venison. But I really hope you try it with wonderful deer meat. I don’t find venison to have a strong game flavour. To me, it tastes similar to lean but well-aged beef.

If you’ve no objection to shooting, then venison is a good, ethical choice. Most of it in the UK is free range and not intensively farmed. The excellent venison you see in this post was from a local supplier: Sprinks Farm. Not just free-range, but organic too.

Venison Bourguignon is a slow-cooked dish. This means you can use the cheaper and tougher, but tastier, cuts. Butchers normally sell venison for stewing already cut into chunky pieces. There’s usually zero prep to do e.g. I’ve never found any excess fat needing to be cut off.

EASY VENISON BOURGUIGNON

Although the list of ingredients and instructions in the recipe card at the end look lengthy, this is actually a pretty easy dish. Little different to making many other types of stew, there’s just a couple of ingredients (baby onions or shallots plus some mushrooms) that are prepped separately and added to the Venison Bourguignon near the end of cooking.

The only important bit of equipment is a large, lidded casserole dish which can go on top of the stove and in the oven. For the red wine, something pleasantly drinkable but not expensive will be fine. I used a medium-priced French pinot noir.

Some recipes for bourguignon marinate the meat in the wine and herbs for a few hours. But I don’t bother. I find that the relatively long cooking time, together with all the other great flavours, make the meat perfectly tender and the stew delicious.

What follows next is a step-by-step guide with images and tips. Alternatively, you can Jump to Recipe.

BROWNING THE MEAT, ONIONS & GARLIC

As venison is so lean, we add some fat in the form of bacon. In this case, it isn’t only to stop the dish being dry, but also because fatty pork in some form is a traditional part of bourguignon.

I start with my casserole dish on top of the cooker and fry strips of pancetta in olive oil. Here it’s fantastic dry cured smoked pancetta from the Port of Lancaster Smokehouse. But pre-prepared bacon lardons or chopped streaky bacon are fine too. Fry the pieces quickly at medium-high heat until golden, then transfer to a plate, leaving the fat behind.

Before browning the venison chunks in the flavoursome fat, the meat should be patted dry on kitchen paper and seasoned with salt and pepper. As always when browning, don’t overcrowd the pot or you’ll create a lot of steam, and the meat won’t get crustily brown. Do it in batches and transfer to a plate as each batch is done.

When all the venison has been browned, turn down the heat and start softening a chopped onion and some garlic. Researching traditional bourguignon, I was surprised to see that it usually contains just one clove of garlic. However, I love it so include six. Due to the long, slow cooking this doesn’t result in an overtly garlicky flavour, just a lovely mellow savouriness.

When you read the detailed recipe, you’ll see that I season with small amounts of salt and pepper at various stages. I find this gives a much better result than guessing at the beginning how much will be needed, or having to make a big correction at the end.

COOKING THE FLOUR & RED WINE

Although most of the thickening of the sauce is achieved through simmering and reducing, it’s helped along with a little plain flour. After softening the onions and garlic, stir in a tablespoon and a half and cook for a couple of minutes.

So you’re less likely to get lumps in the sauce, the next stage is best done off the heat. Start by adding a splash of the wine and stir thoroughly to combine it smoothly with the flour coated onion. Keep adding more wine, stirring to incorporate it, until all the wine has been added.

The next stage is important, particularly if you’ve previously found red wine sauces bitter. Back on the heat, allow the wine to bubble vigorously for 3 minutes. This, combined with the long simmering later, cooks out the alcohol which can otherwise give an unpleasant taste.

There’s just a couple more things to add to the pot and it will be ready for the oven.

ADD BACK THE MEAT PLUS SOME HERBS & STOCK

First, put back in the pancetta or bacon plus the venison. Make sure you tip in all the juices that will have collected on the plate too. Along with some more seasoning, it’s at this point we add a little bunch of fresh herbs.

Known as a bouquet garni, the traditional herbs in bourguignon are thyme, bay leaves, and parsley. I go a little bespoke here as I leave out the parsley stalk, preferring to add a generous amount of the chopped herb later.

Tying the herbs together with kitchen string means the bunch is easier to fish out later. Don’t worry if you don’t have any string though. Just nestle the herbs among the other ingredients.

The final ingredient for this stage is beef stock. You only need enough to barely cover the meat. Depending on the shape and size of your pot, 250 – 350 ml should be enough. If using stock cubes, you’ll need two.

After bringing the whole lot up to a boil, give it a stir, put on the lid and place in your preheated oven.

FINISHING SLOW COOKED VENISON BOURGUIGNON

Different batches of venison, or any other meat, will take varying lengths of time to get completely tender. In this case, I’d expect it to be almost there at 2 – 2½ hours. And we need to know when it’s almost there, rather than completely done, so we can add the remaining ingredients during the final 30 minutes.

As we learned earlier, bourguignon traditionally includes bacon (which I prefer in at the start), plus whole small onions and mushrooms. These are browned in butter in a frying pan before being stirred into the stew. The onions (shallots in this instance) need around 25 – 30 minutes simmering in the stew, the mushrooms (button or regular ones cut up) only 10 or so minutes.

Because I can’t know in advance when the meat will reach the ‘almost there’ stage, I brown the onions and mushrooms (separately) straight after the Venison Bourguignon goes in the oven. That way, I know they’ll be on hand when needed.

Although you don’t want to overcook the venison, don’t get too worried about exact timings. The odd ten, fifteen, or even twenty minutes of additional cooking isn’t going to matter a great deal.

If you want to concentrate the sauce, just cook a little longer with the lid off.

SERVING VENISON BOURGUIGNON

You can serve bourguignon with pasta, rice, or bread. But potatoes seem to be the more common choice, either mashed or boiled. My Venison Bourguignon was absolutely delicious over creamy, buttery mash. The potatoes were Rudolph from my organic Moorland Veg Box: some of the loveliest, most potato-ey flavoured potatoes I’ve eaten.

While several bourguignon recipes include chunks of carrot, I prefer any extra vegetables on the side. Dark, leafy greens are good, but here there’s striking rainbow-coloured carrots, also from my veg box. Lightly boiled then doused in butter, they brightened up the bowl beautifully.

All the different flavours in the bourguignon had melded wonderfully well during the cooking. The sauce was rich without being heavy. The tasty shallots and mushrooms were tender but not overly soft. And then of course there was the venison. Full of robust meaty flavour rather than strongly gamey, and wonderfully tender.

My recipe will serve six people, maybe more if you’re not as greedy us. But Venison Bourguignon keeps for 2 – 3 days in the fridge or can be frozen so, even if you’re a smaller household it’s worth making the full amount using a kilo of meat. Or maybe even multiply up when this fantastic wild meat is in season.

I enjoy it as perfect comfort food. But I think this dish is impressive enough to serve to guests. Without a huge amount of hands-on time, you can let the stew simmer quietly away while you prepare the rest of the meal or even make it in advance and reheat.

Whether you’re new to bourguignon or venison, I hope you’ll try my recipe. Please let me know in the comments what you thought and don’t forget to leave a rating.

5 from 1 vote

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Venison Bourguignon

Venison Bourguignon is inspired by French beef bourguignon: a rich meat stew slow cooked in red wine with bacon, mushrooms and baby onions.

Serve over creamy mashed potato, buttery pappardelle pasta, or rice.

Course Main Course

Cuisine French

Keyword stew, casserole, slow cooked, game

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 3 hours 40 minutes

Total Time 4 hours

Servings 6

Author Moorlands Eater

Ingredients

• 6 sprigs thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 - 1.2 kg stewing venison in large chunks stewing beef can be substituted
• salt and black pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 120 g pancetta, lardons or streaky bacon cut into small strips
• 1 large onion roughly chopped
• 6 cloves garlic finely chopped
• 1.5 tbsp plain flour
• 500 ml red wine e.g. Pinot Noir
• 250 - 350 ml beef stock if using cubes, you'll need 2
• 25 - 35 g butter
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 12 - 16 baby onions or shallots peeled but left whole
• 300 g button mushrooms or larger ones cut to a similar size
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley

Instructions

1. Using kitchen string, tie the thyme sprigs and bay leaves together into a little bundle then set aside.

2. Preheat the oven to 140 C / 120 Fan / Gas 1.

3. Blot dry the venison pieces with kitchen paper then toss with a little salt and plenty of black pepper. Set aside.

4. Put the 2 tbsp of olive oil in a large casserole dish (it will need a lid later) and put over medium-high heat.

   Add the pancetta, lardons, or bacon strips and cook quickly until golden. Transfer to a large plate, leaving the fat in the casserole.

5. Keeping the heat at medium-high, brown the venison in batches: don't crowd the pot or they won't brown properly. As each batch is browned transfer it to the plate with the pancetta, lardons or bacon. Continue until all the venison is browned.

6. Reduce the heat to medium then add the chopped onion and garlic. Add a little salt and pepper then stir around, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the casserole.

   Cook for 6-8 minutes but turn the heat down a little if they are getting dark brown.

7. Stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

   Take the casserole off the heat and stir in a little of the wine to incorporate it into the flour coated onion. Keep adding more wine and continue stirring to ensure no lumps until all the wine has been added.

   Put the casserole back on the heat and bring to a boil, stirring all the time. Bubble vigorously for 3 minutes.

8. Tip the pancetta and venison back into the casserole along with the juices that have collected on the plate and stir well.

   Add the bunch of herbs, a little salt and a generous grind of pepper then pour in enough beef stock to barely cover the meat. Stir.

9. Put on the lid and bring to a boil again. Stir, then transfer to the preheated oven with the lid back on.

   Cook until the meat is almost completely tender: this is likely to take 2 - 2½ hrs.

   While the stew is cooking, get the baby onions or shallots and the mushrooms ready as per the next steps.

10. Put 25 g of the butter and the teaspoon of olive oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat.

    When hot, add the whole baby onions or shallots and season with a little salt and pepper. Cook, stirring often, until lightly browned but not softening. Transfer to a plate or bowl, leaving the fat behind.

11. Put the mushrooms in the pan you browned the onions in and season with a little salt and pepper. Quickly brown them, adding a little more butter if needed, but evaporate off any water that comes out. Transfer the mushrooms to a plate or bowl, including any pan juices.

12. When the venison is almost completely tender stir the onions into the casserole then return to the oven for 20 minutes.

    After 20 minutes, stir the mushrooms and their juices into the casserole plus HALF of the chopped parsley. Cook for a further 10 minutes.

13. Check that the meat is perfectly tender: if not, return to the oven for another 15 minutes and check again. If the sauce needs reducing then cook a little longer with the lid off.

    When the meat is done, check the seasoning and add more salt and pepper if needed. Stir in the remaining parsley except a little for garnishing.

14. Serve over potatoes, pasta or rice, sprinkled with the reserved parsley. Serve with vegetables on the side if liked.

    Leftovers can be kept in the fridge for 2 days or frozen.

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