Blanquette de veau

La blanquette de veau is probably the most traditional French dish, which requires usually hours of attended cooking using a recipe transmitted through the matriarcal line in French families. For having lived abroad for many years, the "blanquette" becomes a reminder of the homeland. After having mastered the recipe on land, the question was how to make sure that once in a while we can have the blanquette on board of Belisama without jeopardising a full day of sailing. After a few trials, I found the solution, which I am presenting here, associating slow cooking at home, sous-vide packaging, and on board pre-serving arrangements. This changed our sailor's lives!

Ingredients for 8 servings

Garniture

  • 2 kg of veal stew meat diced
  • 2 yellow onions cut in half
  • 400 g of Paris white mushroom
  • 1 shallot
  • 1 garlic head
  • 1 branch of celeri
  • 4 thyme sprigs
  • 2 leak whites
  • 2 sliced carrots
  • 10 cl of dry white wine
  • 4 branches of parsley
  • Bouquet garni
  • 4 girofle cloves
  • Salt and peper

Sauce

  • 4 table spoons of flour
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 1 lemon juice

The first step is to sear the meat in a slow cooker for 15 minutes at 190°C for lightly colouring the veal pieces.

After 15 minutes, add the garniture and set the slow cooker at 65°C (low) for 10 to 12 hours of unattended cooking.

See below how it looks at the end of the slow-cooking process. For the sauce, I put same amount of butter and flower in a pot, and warm gently while continuously stirring. Once the butter and the flower are fully integrated, while stirring, incorporate the juice and continue stirring until the flower expand and the sauce gets unctuous. Add a good chunk of crème fraiche, a lemon juice and the two egg yolks. Once done, pour the sauce to the blanquette.

Now comes the difficult part where you have to pour the blanquette into two sous-vide bags, clean the edges, and vacuum the bags carefully to ensure that the sauce does not go through the vacuum pump. In fact, as the sauce should be a bit thick because of the flower, it nicely seals itself once the air has been evacuated. For this, I use an OBH food sealer which I found locally for around 60€, and which does the job very nicely.

After 12 hours at 65°C, the blanquette should be quite pasteurised and therefore fit for preservation. However, because of the previous step requiring quite heavy handling to transfer from the slow cooker to the bags and sealing them, I run the sealed bag through the sous-vide immersion cooker at 80°C for a few minutes, ensuring sterilisation of the surface of the bag, and therefore preventing any surface contamination that could have occurred during the manipulation.

I put finally the bag, after marking date and content, in freezing cold water before putting it to the fridge where it can be kept for a full month (tested deliciously by François on Cybele 17 and ourselves). This gives a month possibilities for nice warm quick meals after a full day of sailing for a full crew...

Useful links

  • Blanquette de veau on Wikipedia
  • La blanquette du roi Oscar II