Beef Burgundy

American-style beef stew is a natural for the slow cooker, but a more sophisticated beef Burgundy doesn’t fare as well—long hours in a covered slow cooker turn its foundation of red wine sour. Here’s how we revised this French classic for the slow cooker:

Test Kitchen Discoveries

• To save time, we used precut meat (labeled “chuck”) and browned only half of it in bacon drippings before adding it to the slow cooker.
• Since slow cookers have a tendency to wash out the flavor of stew, we added a lot of garlic and thyme, half a can of tomato paste for sweetness, and a hit of soy sauce to boost both flavor and color.
• Adding a splash of wine at the end of cooking produced a sharp and astringent taste. For a more balanced wine flavor, we reduced the finishing wine by half before adding it to the cooked stew, which allowed the alcohol time to cook out and the flavors time to mellow.