I’ve got six pounds of beef short ribs I am planning on braising for dinner tomorrow. I’m thinking some pinot noir, beef stock, small onions, fresh mushrooms, fresh rosemary, kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Three hours in a dutch oven at 350.
Am I forgetting anything?
Served with red skinned mash potatoes with roasted garlic, and oven roasted winter vegetables (brussel sprouts, parsnips and butternut squash).
You forgot to invite me. I’ll let that go. See you tomorrow.
No.
That is one of my all time favorite meals.
Be sure to leave time for skimming the fat. Short ribs can be quite fatty, and you probably don’t want to serve it with a layer of grease floating on top.
Sounds good to me! Just make sure you brown them well to begin with, don’t forget the salt, and you’re all set. Skimming the fat is a good idea–it’s much easier if you make them a day in advance and let the fat settle and harden in the fridge. Then you can just remove that solidified layer of fat. But who has that kind of patience?
Take the meat off the bones, sear them separately, braise and then remove the bones before serving. You get a better sear and easier eating.
Also, trim off any solid chunks of fat, cut into small chunks and start them off in a dry pan until they render their fat and then use the rendered beef fat to sear the rest of your meat instead of vegetable oil. The cracklings can either be sprinkled on top when serving or a treat for the chef.
Garlic?
I was thinking of browning the meat on the gas grill instead of in the dutch oven. I’ve done that for beef burgundy and chili verde, and it gives a really good flavor to the meat.
And garlic, of course. :smack:
I used this method for reheating leftover steaks…Stick in a ziplock bag and soak in water at 130-140deg for 30 min…fresh meat will take lots longer, but never over cooked.
All it does is bring it up to temp and keep it there, while not over cooking, breaking the collagen bonds in tough meat in a slow process.
Then you whisk them to the grill to char the outsides for a few min then done…
It’s worth a try on tough meats.
Fresh thyme.
I prefer shallots over onions in this dish with a lighter hand on the garlic.
The downside of this is that there’s no brown goodness in the bottom of the dutch oven to make the sauce that much yummier.
Either way, sounds great!
That is true. I am rethinking this, as it is currently 16 degrees here, and not expected to get a lot warmer. Think I will brown the ribs in the dutch oven.
I am seeing a number of recipes that add a sofrito of onions, carrots and celery, pureed in a food processor, to the braising liquid. Anybody try that before?
I’ve done the onions-celery-carrots mirepoix/soffrito before, but I’ve never pureed it, just finely diced it. It works fine. My ossobucco (braised veal shanks), for instance, contains all three of those ingredients, chopped up. Whether you want to use it, it’s up to you. It gives the dish a little bit of sweetness and additional flavor.
That sounds like a low-rent version of sous vide cooking. You can actually cook your steaks that way from the beginning. The idea is that you cook them to exactly medium, and then sear the outside as fast and hot as you can, so that you get the seared crust, but don’t overcook the rest.
The pros use all sorts of water circulators and sophisticated temperature controllers and what-not, but a ziploc bag and a small cooler will do the trick quite nicely.
The OP’s recipe sounds basically like beef bourguignon, except that IIRC, there’s a healthy dose of garlic in beef bourguignon as well as the other stuff mentioned.
Brown the short ribs in the dutch over, remove from pot and set aside.
Add mirepoix to the pot and brown it. Add garlic, thyme, salt, pepper, and whatever other herbs and seaasoning you like during the last couple of minutes of browning the mirepoix.
Put the ribs back in the pot, fill with your cooking liquid about halfway up the ribs, put in oven and braise. Turn the ribs over halfway through the cooking time.
Remove the ribs from the pot, set aside on a warm platter. Strain the cooking liquid into a saucepan through a fine mesh strainer, pushing it with a wooden spoon to get all the flavor out. Reduce the strained liquid by half.
At that point, you can sautee your fresh mushrooms and add them to your sauce.
^ That’s the method I follow, except I don’t bother straining at the end. It’s more elegant to strain and reduce (and you get more concentrated flavor), but I’m lazy, and, besides, I like chunks.
I have and it is good. Makes the sauce a bit thicker.
Your recipe sounds awesome. It’s my favorite dinner, too.
My little tricks I’ve learned throughout the years:
Rather than browning the ribs in fat first, I put them under the broiler. They get nice and crusty brown without supervision, freeing you up to do other prep work, while a lot of their fat renders away and doesn’t end up all over the stovetop or in your gravy.
When the ribs are all tender after braising, fish them out of the liquid and arrange them on a pan and put them back in the oven and turn up the heat to high. Let them get crisp and brown on the outside while you are plating the vegies and de-greasing the gravy. The ribs emerge juicy and soft on the inside and crisp and sizzly on the outside - utterly delicious.
"Take the meat off the bones, sear them separately, braise and then remove the bones before serving. "
Remove the bones twice? Even onec is toomany times. Not only is ribs ribs ribs need ribs.