Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Beef Pot-au-feu
Beef Pot-au-feu
About six pounds of any cut of beef will do for this; tie the meat up with a string, and put it, with the bone, in a very large saucepan filled with sufficient water to cover the meat, then place on fire and boil. As the scum rises skim off with a skimmer. Do not allow the water to quite boil; this may be regulated by adding a very small quantity of cold water from time to time, which prevents bubbling and allows the scum to rise, then salt to taste, adding a whole pepper, allspice and an onion stuck with cloves, another onion toasted almost black, a leek and three carrots of average size cut in lengths, two turnips cut in four, and a bunch of herbs, such as bay leaves, thyme and marjoram, a clove of garlic and a small handful of parsley, all tied together into a bundle. The vegetables should be added gradually so as not to check the gentle simmering, which it is needful to keep uninterrupted. Skim again, and leave on stove to simmer for four hours. Strain and skim before serving; add a little sugar, and more salt to taste, make very hot and pour into a soup-tureen over small slices of toasted bread without crusts. Vegetables may be added or not, according to taste.
A classic French boiled dinner treated here as a clear soup: the broth is strained and served over toast, with the meat and vegetables optional on the side. Nearly everything depends on temperature control.
- Never let it boilThe instruction to add a little cold water whenever bubbling starts is the hinge of the recipe. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and albumin into the liquid and turns the broth cloudy and greasy; hold it at 180-190F, where only an occasional bubble breaks the surface.
- The cut and the bone"Any cut" understates it. Use collagen-rich braising meat — shin, chuck, short rib, oxtail — and ask for a split marrow bone or knuckle to go in alongside. Lean roasting cuts give you dry meat and thin broth in four hours.
- Why the stringTying the meat keeps it in one piece so it can be lifted out cleanly and doesn't shed shreds into the broth. Butcher's twine, two or three turns lengthwise and crosswise.
- The burnt onionThe onion "toasted almost black" is oignon brûlé: half an onion laid cut-side down on a dry pan until the surface is genuinely charred. It contributes the amber colour of a good consommé and a faint bitterness that reads as depth. It is not a mistake and should not be skipped.
- Whole pepper and allspiceWhole peppercorns and whole allspice berries — a dozen of the first, four or five of the second. Ground spice will not strain out and will muddy the finished broth.
- Skimming and degreasingSkim the grey scum in the first twenty minutes, when it rises fastest. For the fat, the easier route is to chill the strained broth so the fat sets on top and lifts off in a sheet.
- The sugarA little sugar at the end is seasoning, not sweetening — perhaps half a teaspoon for this volume. It rounds off the bitterness from the charred onion and the turnip.
- Vegetables in stagesAdding them gradually keeps the pot from dropping off the simmer, which is the reason the recipe itself gives. Holding the carrot and turnip back until the last hour so they arrive intact rather than collapsed is a modern adjustment, not something the original directs.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no water quantity, only enough to cover, so the yield depends on the pot; expect several quarts of broth from six pounds of meat, enough for a large table as a first course. Serve the broth over crustless toast as directed, then the sliced meat and vegetables as a second course with coarse salt, mustard and cornichons -- the usual French accompaniments.
Pot-au-feu — literally "pot on the fire" — is the domestic backbone of French cooking, a single pot of beef and root vegetables that yields a clear broth for the first course and boiled meat for the second. Its presence in a Waldorf-Astoria book of the late 1890s is a reminder of how thoroughly the great American hotel kitchens of that era were staffed and organised on French lines; Oscar Tschirky's dining rooms ran on the classical repertoire, and even a peasant dish arrives with the professional's discipline attached, from the burnt onion for colour to the insistence that the surface never break into a boil. The technique described here has something in common with the way consommé is built in a hotel kitchen, though without the clarification with egg white or the mirepoix, and the fussy business of adding cold water to keep the pot below boiling is the sort of detail often associated with cooking on a coal range, where heat was hard to lower quickly.