I didn’t understand that either. Braising with the bone in is essential to developing the flavor.
I wonder if Shalmanese meant to take the meat off the bones, sear the meat, include the bones in the braise (for flavor and gelatin and such), then remove the bones from the braise before serving. Seems like a bit of extra, and unnecessary work; after braising, the bones should come right off of the meat (or the meat right off of the bones, if you prefer).
Yeah, I think for short ribs it’s a bit silly. But I’m one of these people who love bones in my food. Boneless wings, boneless ribs, WTF is all that about? Part of the joy is eating off the bone, for me.
Regardless, as you say, with short ribs, they pretty much slide off the bone in a long braise, anyway, so it shouldn’t be an issue.
Update: The shorts ribs turned out awesome. I pretty much used Anne Burrell’s recipe on FoodNetwork, with the pureed onion/carrots/celery/garlic and tomato paste. I used beef stock instead of water, a whole bottle of shiraz, a few more cloves of garlic, fresh thyme and rosemary. After the ribs were done, I skimmed off the excess fat, and served the braising liquid like gravy, and it was amazing. People were soaking it up with bread it was so good by itself. The ribs were fall-off-the-bone tender, the best I’ve made. Highly recommend the recipe, though it will take every bit of four hours to prepare.
i was in charge of the beef tongue sugo at work yesterday.
blanched the tongues for about 30 minutes, removed the skin, salted + seared them.
poured excess oil out of the pan, sauteed some whole garlic, deglazed with two bottles of red wine.
put the tongues and that mix in a hotel pan, added a #10 can of peeled plum tomatoes, salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaves.
we let it braise overnight in the oven. total cooking time about 16 hours, and it came out delicious.
I make oxtail using (almost) the Epicurious recipe. It’s similar, and I use Shiraz, too.
Season and brown the oxtails, I like a dusting of cayenne as well as salt and pepper, reduce the wine by half in a pot, chop the vegs and throw them in the browning skillet to sweat, de-glaze with a little stock, put the rest of the stock in the wine, add 1/2 cup of Spicy V8 to the wine/stock and reduce a little.
Put the sweated vegs in a roasting dish, arrange oxtails on the top, add the liquid, braise.
Strain out the veg chunks, skim/discard the fat, reduce the sauce, pour over the oxtails that are back in the roasting dish, cook just long enough for the sauce to set on the meat.
Those are so damn good, I never even knew until I saw oxtail at the store, bought them, and decided I better figure out how to cook 'em.
Oxtail and shanks make the best beef-vegetable soup. Good luck finding them at a typical grocery.