You may have a Dutch oven and not even know it.
A Dutch oven is a large pot with an arched lid that offers extra room for cooking something like a pot roast or whole chicken.
Dutch ovens are available in a variety of shapes and materials. We like our enamel-coated cast iron Dutch oven from Le Creuset that is dishwasher-safe and can withstand 800F heat (if only our oven went so high). The heavy cast iron allows for browning a roast on the stove top and popping it in the oven for several hours, all the while evenly distributing the heat and allowing room for braising liquid.
Do you have to have a Dutch oven? No. A 6-quart tight-lidded pot will do. A good-quality Dutch oven is a luxury to use in the kitchen, though, so you might want to put one on your wish list.
A cassoulet is a hearty casserole made chiefly of navy beans and some manner of unsmoked pork that originates from the Languedoc region of France (but Castelnaudary, Carcassone and Toulouse all have a strong cassoulet tradition). Cassoulet recipes vary depending on the region, but can include pork loin, leg, Toulouse sausage, rind, lard, as well as mutton, duck, goose or even cod.
The French have committees to make rules about their precious national dishes, and a proper cassoulet is defined as containing 70 percent navy (or haricot) beans, stock, herbs and seasonings like garlic, and 30 percent pork, mutton and duck or goose confit.
Beans are cooked separately before simmered together with meat, so that the beans are impregnated with a meaty flavor; the dish is finished in the oven, ideally in a traditional round cassole dish, with added meat and breadcrumbs that create a golden crust that is broken a requisite eight times during the cooking process.
Goulash is a Hungarian beef-based soup or light stew made with paprika and onions and traditionally eaten with potatoes.
The recipe for Gúlyas dates from the 9th century, before Hungary was a state, when nomads dried cooked meat in the sun, and carried it around to be boiled in water for stew or soup when the need arose.
Although goulash recipes vary as recipes do, the purist insists that goulash should not include wine, flour or sour cream just before serving, as many modern recipes indicate (the addition of sour cream technically makes a paprikás).
Goulash is eaten throughout Eastern Europe and the goulash that Americans usually make is closer to a Hungarian stew called pörkölt, that is eaten with noodles, although the term has come to mean a muddle of bastardized neo-goulash dishes with little resemblance to their Hungarian ancestors.
Coq au vin is the name of a classic old French stew that used to mean rooster, or cock, cooked in wine. Old birds who'd been kept around for years needed to be braised slowly to soften up their meat, and the sauce for the dish was thickened with the cock's blood.
These days, we use chicken when making a coq au vin, and a roux to thicken the sauce.
The dish also contains ingredients including lardons, onions, mushrooms, carrots, chicken stock, brandy, garlic and seasonings in addition to the wine. Coq au vin is typically served with pasta, steamed potatoes or latkes.
Short ribs are part of the rib cage of a steer. They lie along the side of the animal, between the spare ribs (that run along the belly) and the rib roast (that runs along the back).
This means short rib meat is pretty flavorful and a little tough since the muscles in that area help support the ribs and the internal organs. At the same time they’re just a little bit away from prime rib, one of the premium cuts of beef, making short ribs a great buy -- for a fraction of the price of rib roast you are getting meat that’s of very similar quality.
Osso buco means “bone with a hole” in Italian. It’s a braised stew traditionally made with veal shanks -- cross sections of the leg including the bone and marrow, which give the stew body and unctuosness.
The general formula for osso buco involves deeply browning veal (or beef) shanks in oil or butter, adding aromatics and braising with stock, wine and tomatoes. Osso buco is traditionally topped with a gremolata.
