When I started cooking in earnest, at around 12 or 13 years old, there was hardly a recipe I wasn't willing to attempt. I reduced afor hours and hours to serve with beef for my high school friends; I made mousses and terrines for my mother's parties; I sautéed squid every Saturday...for breakfast. When Thomas Keller published, I'd spend days making a single dish from it. I was willing to cook anything. Anything, that is, except pot-au-feu.
But even after learning what the pot-au-feu was, I was still deeply uneasy with the name itself, an intimidatingly French mishmash of vowels that I had no idea how to coax through my mouth. Foh? Feh? Fah? If I ever decided to cook pot-au-feu, I'd have to say "pot-au-feu" to whoever I served it to, and that was a thought too humiliating to bear.
As with any dish that features long-cooked beef, some cuts are more appropriate than others. What you want are ones from the harder working muscles of the cow, which are loaded with collagen-rich connective tissue. Those cuts start out tough, but with enough time and heat, the collagen melts into succulent gelatin that, along with fat, gives the impression of juiciness in the well-done meat.