Chanterelle Mushroom Beef Stew with Special Wine Pairings

Chanterelle Beef Stew made in the slow cooker gives you a great smelling house all day with a delicious meal to look forward to in the end.  Start making this stew the night before you plan to enjoy it, so that the beef can marinate overnight before spending the next day in the slow cooker.

We initially served this with a special bottle of French wine for our 2017 Open That Bottle Night observance. In 2020, we did a remake of the recipe and paired it with another great bottle of wine — this time, from Mexico.

Making Chanterelle Beef Stew

As mentioned at the top of post, this chanterelle beef stew does require a bit of advance planning. I recommend an overnight marinade, which means you want to get this stew making started the night before you plan to eat it. The beef marinates overnight, helping to make it tasty and tender. Then in the morning, brown the beef, put together the other ingredients in the stockpot and go about your day.

You will want to plan to return to the stew making about 90 minutes before the cooking time is done to reconstitute the chanterelle mushrooms and add them to the stew.

When I make beef stew in the slow cooker, sometimes I like to finish it on the stove top by simmering it for 30 to 60 minutes prior to serving. This thickens the stew.

You can serve it right from the crockpot if you like, it will just have more liquid. That’s how we made it for our 2020 version.

Can you use other mushrooms for this stew?

Chanterelle mushrooms definitely elevate this dish to serious gourmet status, but they can be a bit tricky to track down. You can order dried chanterelle mushrooms here on Amazon (affiliate link provided).

But you could also substitute other dried mushrooms for the chanterelles. I would suggest dried porcini mushrooms as the best alternative. We have a recipe for beef stew with porcini mushrooms over here, if you’d like to try another one of our stews.

Making this stew in the oven

You can also make this stew in a regular oven if you like. Brown the beef in a large dutch oven, then add the additional ingredients to the dutch oven instead of the crockpot. Cook the stew a 300 degree oven for about 4 hours, adding the reconstituted mushrooms about 30 minutes prior to finishing the chanterelle beef stew cooking process.

Mexican Wine Pairing

I’ve been working through a lineup of excellent Mexican wines that we will be sampling as part of a live tasting event coming up on November 7 — join the fun if you see this post in time!

Talking with Max from Tozi Imports, I was looking for some hearty fare to go with the 2015 Vinos Lechuza “Amantes” Red Blend.

Perusing Cooking Chat for some recipes due for a remake that might work well with the wine, I seized upon this Chanterelle Mushroom Beef Stew recipe. A long simmering beef stew definitely seemed to be the kind of dish I wanted to make to pair with the wine. 

Plus, noting that we had previously paired the stew with a Châteauneuf-du-Pape (CDP), this new pairing would provide a chance to showcase how a top-notch Mexican wine can be considered alongside a highly regarded French wine.

The Amantes Red Blend is an interesting combination of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Nebbiolo and Tempranillo. Not a typical blend, but here again, a comparison with a CDP is apt, as wines from that Rhone AOC can have as many as thirteen grapes in the blend.

OK, so how did the Amantes taste and pair with the dish?

On the nose, the wine has bright red fruit and oak notes. On the palate, cherry fruit, menthol and well-integrated tannins. An excellent wine, one of the best I’ve had recently!

As you might suspect, with these tastings, the robust Vinos Lechuza “Amantes” red blend is an excellent pairing for the Chanterelle Beef Stew!

Another hearty dish that could go well with this wine is our Red Wine Braised Short Ribs with Mushrooms. 

Open That Bottle Night

I’ve been a big fan of Open That Bottle Night (OTBN) since I first heard of it over five years ago. Not that I need an excuse to open a great bottle of wine–I don’t typically hold onto wine for a long time. But I do have a bottom shelf of my wine rack where some of my higher end bottles wait the right meal to be opened.

When I received a bottle of 2013 Télégramme Châteauneuf-du-Pape (14.5% ABV) for Christmas, my first thought was “A perfect OTBN bottle!”. Well, OK, actually my first thought was “What a great gift!”. But I did quickly think of OTBN, as I might instinctively think a 2013 Châteauneuf-du-Pape might warrant  some cellar time prior to opening. But I hadn’t had a Châteauneuf-du-Pape in awhile, so about 2 months in the cellar seemed like a good compromise between a year or two of cellaring and opening it immediately to enjoy with our Christmas dinner.

About Châteauneuf-du-Pape

Wine from the Châteauneuf-du-Pape AOC is perhaps the most highly sought after wine from the Rhone region of France. Literally translated as “the new castle of the Pope”, the town takes its name from the period of time in the 14th century when the Pope was relocated to Avignon.

When I first learned about Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine, I heard that 13 grape varieties, 8 red and 5 white, are allowed in a CDP blend. I’ve sampled a few that have all 13, which creates quite a complex flavor profile. The number of allowable grapes have increased as blanc and noir versions of Grenache and Picpoul are counted separately.

I do really like the Grenache/Syrah blend that is the mainstay of a CDP. However, the reputation of the region generates some pretty high prices, and I’ve come to find there are other parts of the Rhone where good producers make some excellent wines for substantially less than a Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Hence, I haven’t had a CDP in some time, making it a perfect OTBN treat.

Beef Stew with Châteauneuf-du-Pape

Sometimes I’m picking a wine to go with the recipe I plan to make, but for OTBN, the starting point was definitely our bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I wanted something hearty and rustic. CDPs tend to be big, robust wines, not something to go with a light dish. A slow cooking chanterelle beef stew seemed like just the thing! I figured the chanterelle mushrooms would add a good flavor element to add some depth and complexity to match up with the wine.

Let’s talk more about that bottle of wine! About the time I added the mushrooms for our chanterelle beef stew, I opened up our bottle of Télégramme Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I thought it might need some breathing time to open up. But I was surprised to note that it was softer than I expected, with well-integrated fruit and tannins right from the first taste. This CDP has a light woodsy nose, blackberry fruit with notes of leather. Good structure, medium bodied. Very enjoyable as the stew simmered, and even better when trading bites of the hearty stew for sips of this excellent wine. I was definitely pleased with the pairing!

The Télégramme Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a blend of 80% Grenache, 10% Syrah, 6% Mourvedre and 4% Cinsault. I only took a closer look a the label detail to get the grape breakdown, and noted the explanation that “Le Télégramme is Vignobles Brunier’s second-label wine in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape AOC…” and goes on to note it is made from young vines. Thus, they recommend it being enjoyed in the early years of its life…so much more suited to being opened now, not being cellared. Glad OTBN prompted me to enjoy it sooner rather than later!

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Martin from ENOFYLZ Wine Blog will post Batting A Thousand for OTBN Vol 8- A Celebration With Friends

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Julie from Wine-N-Friends will share A memorable pairing with 2012 Kenzo Murasaki

Gwendolyn from Wine Predator is posting Cheers to Open That Bottle Night 2017 with Champagne from Bollinger

David from Cooking Chat is posting Chanterelle Beef Stew with a Special Wine

No blog post about #OTBN, no worries! You can still join the conversation about Open That Bottle Night Pairings by joining our live Twitter Chat on Saturday, March 11. Simply tune into the #winePW hashtag on Twitter at 11 a.m. ET / 8 a.m. PT on 3/11 and join the conversation. Please also make plans to join us for the April Wine Pairing Weekend event, when Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm will be hosting on the topic of “My Old Standy” on April 8. You can get a list of all the past and upcoming #winePW events by visiting the Wine Pairing Weekend page.