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Plat du Tour
series • cooking
PG
series • cooking
PG
The humble egg may not look like much in its shell: simple in form, dull in colour and plentiful enough to be commonly overlooked. But when this cheap ingredient falls into the hands of a worthy French cook, ouef mastery becomes possible. A culinary manipulation can transform the basic egg into some of the world’s most famous French dishes: perfectly light omelettes, savoury soufflés, and flaky croissants.
Imagine a pot of freshly cooked beef Burgundy. Replace the beef with poached eggs and voila! That’s more or less how it’s done.
Yet there’s one dish, descended from the region of Dijon in east-central France, that’s begging to be noted among the most practical and flexible of all French egg dishes – purely because its recipe was created out of a need to use leftover sauce.
Ouefs en meurette, a meal that requires eggs to be poached in red wine, is a clever spin-off from beef Bourguignon (beef Burgundy). If you’re wondering how that would look, imagine a pot of freshly cooked beef Burgundy. Replace the beef with poached eggs and voila! That’s more or less how it’s done.
Philippe Augé, the Michelin-starred head chef at tells SBS a local story about the origins of the dish, dating back hundreds of years. “Families would cook beef Bourguignon at home for around four to five hours,” says Augé. “Usually, you’d eat the meat and then you’d have this tasty sauce leftover. But then someone said, ‘Why don’t we break an egg directly into the sauce to make use of it?’ That’s the beginning of the story on how ouefs en meurette formed in Burgundy.”
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Beef bourguignon
Although there are a few versions of ouefs en meurette, it’s traditionally made with regionally sourced pinot noir, pearl onions, button mushrooms, and brown veal stock. It is then garnished with croutons, parsley and lardons (cubes of bacon).
Head chef at , Aurélien Mauny, explains that the dish is usually eaten region-wide at lunch or dinner. “Eggs en meurette is very popular in Dijon,” Mauny tells SBS. “The secret to making an authentic ouefs en meurette is using fresh eggs from the farm.”
It should be boiling when you add the egg. You coat the egg with sauce.
Mauny says he serves the dish as an entrée, made in the traditional way – with red wine, veal stock, and smoked pork belly. “The sauce should cook for a long time to remove acidity from the wine,” he says, explaining how to cook the dish. “It should be boiling when you add the egg. You coat the egg with sauce. The sauce should then be slowly reduced.
“When you serve the dish, the white of the egg should be cooked and the yellow should be flowing (and be almost liquid) in the dish. The cooking is based on the feeling, which you get with the experience.”
Augé offers a different version of the Burgundy dish at his restaurant, making it with a local chardonnay “just because we feel white wine is lighter”.
“It’s not too complicated a dish to make,” says Augé. “Cook onions with white wine for around two hours, just to evaporate the spirit [from the alcohol] and then add some cream and butter. Mix it all together and clarify it.
“The way we make our ouefs en meurette, it’s a vegetarian meal. The only thing that we could have sometimes add [on top of the basic recipe] is bacon but if you don’t want to add meat, you could include mushrooms instead.”
Augé tells SBS he enjoys reinventing traditional favourites but believes the original version of ouefs en meurette is also quite sacred.
Home cooks and chefs can just jump straight into the egg-based dish so “the sauce does not have any meatiness in it, as it once used to".
Even still, in modern times, there’s no real need for people to make the egg dish in the way that it used to be cooked – first as a beef Burgundy and then as ouefs en meurette. Instead, home cooks and chefs can just jump straight into the egg-based dish so “the sauce does not have any meatiness in it, as it once used to".
The main point of knowing ouefs en meurette folklore is more to remind cooks that the recipe was borne out of necessity. “People have forgotten the story about ouefs en meurette’s origins. Just don’t forget from where the recipe comes from.”
