Where does Blanquette de veau come from?

This dish comes from France and is a stew with a meat basement, it also belongs to the traditional recipe book of the French “cuisine”. You can find it at every time of the year and is usually served as second plate.

The blanquette de veau is a beef stew typical from France and, to prepare it, we are going to cook it for a long time and low heat, in order to obtain a stew with pieces of really soft and tasty meat.

What is the origin of Blanquette de veau?

The word Blanquette define the way of a cooking preparation for white meats. The most traditional recipe is the Blanquette of veau or Beef Blanquette, although you can also use this technique to prepare lamb, chicken, etc. nowadays, you can also find seafood made with this technique.

The history or origin of this word is unknown, but the dish is known as a very typical dish of the French bourgeois cuisine, and we can deduct that the name comes from the characteristic colour of the dish, with that white sauce that dip the meat.

Ingredients:

• 750 g of beef ribs.
• 200 ml of white wine.
• 2 carrots.
• 2 onions.
• 2 bay leaves.
• 2 cloves.
• 2 egg yolks.
• Half lemon juice.
• 1 spoon of flour.
• ¼ L of milk.
• 2 spoons of butter.
• Olive oil.
• Black pepper.

Time of preparation: 1 hour.

How to cook Blanquette de veau:

First step: Ingredients preparation.

First of all, we are going to prepare the meat, we have to dice it and season it and preserve.

Now is time for the vegetables, take the carrots and slice them, and then take the onions and cut in Julienne.

Finally, take a bowl, and stir the egg yolks with the lemon juice and a spoon of milk. Preserve in a fresh place.

Top Tip: if you don’t preserve the las mixture in a fresh place, the milk will curdle because of the lemon.

Second step: prepare the meat.

Take the meat that we have preserve before and sauté it in a pot with butter. Take an eye on the meat!! It shouldn’t get colour, use low heat.

Meanwhile the meat is cooking, put some water in a small pot and warm it.

So, as I have said, before the meat starts to take colour, cover it with the water you have warmed before and add the white wine, the carrots, the onions, the bay leaves and the cloves.

Cook all these ingredients with low heat.

When the mixture starts boiling, take a spoon and remove the foam, you should remove the firsts 2 or 3 foams.  Finally leave it boiling with low heat for approximately 1 hour.

Top Tip: if you let the meat take colour, it will get passed and, instead of being tender, the texture will be like gum.

Third step: Prepare the sauce.

When the meat is tender, filter the stock and preserve.

Warm some olive oil in a pot and sauté in it the flour. When the four is completely diluted in the oil, add the milk without stop moving. You should add the milk little by little, and stir until everything is correctly mixed before putting more milk inside.

When everything is mixed, add the stock and leave the mixture to cook in a very low heat, add also the glass with the egg yolks, milk and lemon juice.

Top Tip: in this case, if you stop stirring, like with the béchamel, the lumps will start to appear, spoiling the texture and the flavour of the dish.

Final step

Add the prepared sauce to the meat and put everything on the fire to cook all together for approximately 5 minutes. You should serve as soon as you finish cooking.

As accompaniment for this dish, you can cook some small potatoes and put it all together or use rice.