How to make a classic French Pot au feu

France’s ultimate comfort food, hearty pot-au-feu is a robust beef stew that has been a firm favourite since the middle ages and refined over the centuries to this tastebud-tickling dish. Pot au feu literally means ‘pot in the fire’, the traditional way it was cooked hundreds of years ago. Then it was a dish that the poor ate, but over he centuries it became more and more popular with all levels of society, essentially becoming the national dish of France. Here’s how to make a classic French pot au feu.

Pot-au-feu for 8

Preparation: 35 minutes

Cooking: 2 hours 30 hours

Ingredients

1 lb. (500 g) beef ribs (US) or fore/thin ribs (UK)
2 lb. (1 kg) beef chuck (US) or chuck and blade (UK)
1 tablespoon (20 g) kosher salt
1 ¼ lb. (600 g) marrow bones
1 ¼ lb. (600 g) potatoes
1 ¼ lb. (600 g) carrots
1 lb (400 g) zucchini (courgettes)
Fleur de sel
French mustard

Aromatic ingredients

1 large onion
1 carrot
Green leaf of 1 leek
2 cloves
1 bouquet garni
6–8 peppercorns

Method

Trim the meat, leaving each piece whole.

Prepare the aromatic ingredients. Peel and wash the onion and carrot. Wash the leek green. Cut the vegetables in two and push the cloves into the onions near the base.

Place the pieces of meat in a large pot, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil. Remove the meat immediately and transfer the pieces to another pot. Cover them with cold water. Add all the aromatic ingredients and put in the kosher salt. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer for 2 ½ hours. Thirty minutes before the time is up, add the marrow bones. Remove the aromatic ingredients and adjust the seasoning.

Wash, peel, and rinse the potatoes and carrots. Wash the zucchini. Shape the vegetables into regular oval “egg” shapes weighing about 2–2 ½ oz. (50–60 g) per piece. Take 4 cups (1 litre) of the cooking liquid and cook the vegetables in it separately for just the time required for each.

Serve the vegetables with the meat, and the broth in a tureen or vegetable dish. Accompany with fleur de sel and French mustard in small dishes.

CHEF’S NOTES

Use other types of meat besides beef, like pork and veal. You may even try fresh, cured, or smoked meats. If you opt for this kind of variation, don’t cook the meats together. Choose your vegetables according to the seasons.
Every European country has its own version of this boiled dish. The pot-au-feu, the hearty winter meal par excellence, is a one-pot dish comprising of broth, meat, and vegetables; and leftover meat may be eaten cold, or reheated.

Extracted from The Complete Book of French Cooking by Hubert Delorme and Vincent Boué (Flammarion, 2023).