Bison burgundy: too good to share.

Dan called me out of the blue and said he was bringing something over to the house.  When he arrived, he handed me a pint container of something brown.  We're friends, so I immediately ruled out poop.  "Bison burgundy," he said before I could make a joke about poop.  "From Kitchen Little.  I didn't have enough to keep and it's too good not to share."

That's where Dan was wrong.

Beef burgundy, aka bœuf bourguignon, is a traditional stew of tough beef braised in red wine and beef stock.  From French peasant roots elevated by Escoffier* (and brought back to us American peasants by Julia Child), it truly is an amazingly flavorful dish.  Dan's preparation swapped the beef for bison, a leaner, robustly flavored meat.  I guess we could call it "buff bourguignon" if we were being clever and/or cute, but this masterful dish deserves more respect than that.

The reason that this picture shows a half-full bowl of bison burgundy is that I was hoarding it all for myself; I wanted to make sure I got as much as I wanted before I stopped guarding the bowl like a hungry dog long enough to snap a photo.  The rich, intense flavors absolutely overwhelmed my manners.  Great food, even a refined dish like this, still has the ability to bring out the animal instinct to defend it with your life and share with no one.


*As with most food origin stories, the notion that Escoffier popularized bœuf bourguignon is disputed.