It's Game On, Bitches!

Tonight was the Beef Bourguignon throwdown.

Barefoot Contessa Filet of Beef Bourguignon from the original Barefoot Contessa cookbook vs. Barefoot Contessa Beef Stew Bourguignon Frozen Entree for Two.

You'll be seeing the word Bourguignon quite a bit in this post. It is a very difficult word to spell, and once you look at it for more than a minute it just looks funny. It sounds funny. After this challenge, I hope to not have to write or say it for a long time!

Contender #1

Filet of Beef Bourguignon.

Here are the pearl onions that have just been blanched. Let me tell you....NOT worth it. Apparently the ones you can buy in the freezer are just as good as using fresh ones. I wanted to be true to the recipe and Auntie said that they were easy to peel if you threw them in boiling water first. Not true. I HATE pearl onions. I don't like blanching them. I don't like peeling them. I don't like eating them. Yuck.

Mushrooms sauteeing in the pan:

 Wine, thyme, garlic, tomato paste and veggies cooking away:

Finished product:

It was a fairly easy, quick, but expensive recipe. Serves 6-8, so the calories fall between 600-800.

Contender #2

A bag of frozen food:

Inside the bag were small pouches. One with the sauce, the other with chopped parsley. Plus a bonus coupon for $2 off your next purchase of two Barefoot Contessa meals. As if!

This was the meal dumped into the pan:

And the sauce that suspiciously looked like the contents of a diaper:

The finished product:

Obviously, the two dishes look nothing alike. But how did they taste?

We did a blind taste test with the two dishes, and if Jeffrey can't tell the difference like Auntie claims then he must have had some sort of accident that affects his taste buds. It was painfully obvious which was fresh and which was frozen.

While the frozen meal wasn't completely disgusting, it in no way compares to a freshly cooked meal. My friends had the analogy that it was comparable to a "gourmet meals on wheels" dish. The meat was tender and flavorful until the finish where you got hit with a heavy salt and pepper taste. No wonder, when the sodium in the frozen dish has 65% of your daily recommended intake. The package also did not expire until May of 2014 so I presume all of that salt was keeping it from going bad. The carrots tasted like frozen carrots, but the onions could not be distinguished from the fresh ones. The sauce tasted heavily of mushrooms. And salt.

The fresh meal was amazing. The filet was like buttah, the sauce was sop it up good. We all enjoyed the mushrooms and carrots, but I think everyone could take or leave the pearl onions. While they gave good flavor to the dish, the texture just grosses me out. Like when you go to a haunted house for Halloween and there is a bowl of peeled grapes passing for eyeballs. That is what the pearl onions remind me of. This was the first time I have actually eaten one, and while it tasted fine I have no desire to ever eat one again.

The verdict?

Ina Garten is insane for referring to this as a "fresh dinner." If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...its a frigging duck. Its frozen food that is marginally better than Stouffer's. I guess if you are in the mood for Beef Bourguignon, can't cook, and don't have blood pressure issues, this may work for you.

The fresh dish is delicious and I am glad that I made it. That being said, I have no plans to make it again anytime soon. Its expensive and rich and something that you drag out for a special occasion.

There you have it. Obviously the fresh meal is better than the frozen. Of course, there isn't always time to cook a fresh meal and eating frozen food is a perfectly acceptable alternative. But seeing Auntie's face beaming at me from a bag of crap in the freezer is just plain wrong in my book. I've always associated her with fresh and flavorful cooking. Seeing that plop in a pan has really messed with me. It's like Carrie Bradshaw wearing shoes from Payless. Not plausible.