Braised Beef Short Ribs 2
Degree of Difficulty: Intermediate
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Total Cook Time: Appx 3 hours
This is my second short ribs recipe. What can I say, I love me some short ribs. This particular version was adapted from a recipe that we used during our Moist Heat Cookery class. I modified some of the ingredients in order to make this recipe a bit more accessible for the home chef.
Ingredients:
2-3 lbs short ribs (I prefer the non-boneless version)
1 bottle of red wine (it doesn’t have to be anything too fancy)
3 tbsp canola oil
1 large onion – roughly chopped
3 large carrots – peeled and roughly chopped
3 celery ribs – roughly chopped
3 garlic cloves – roughly chopped
1 sprig fresh rosemary
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
appx 3-4 cups of stock (You can use veal, beef, chicken, or even vegetable stock, just make sure that it has little to no salt. In lieu of a nearly saltless stock, you can use water)
5 oz baby bella mushrooms (or any other kind of fresh mushroom) – quartered
2 tbsp strawberry jam
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
flour – as needed (about 3 tbsp or so)
The first step is to pour the entire bottle of red wine into a sauce pot and reduce it over high heat. This will help to concentrate some of the wine’s flavor, so it’s a good idea to use a wine that you would consider drinking (but it doesn’t have to be a really pricey bottle). Reduce the wine by about 1/3rd and remove from the heat. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.
Next, season the short ribs with salt and pepper. After seasoning, lightly dust all sides of the ribs with flour. Using a large, oven-proof, heavy bottomed pot (I will always recommend cast-iron…make sure it also has a lid) is essential for this dish. Place your pot over medium heat, let it come up to temperature, add the oil to the pot and when that gets hot, place the ribs (fat side down) in the pot. You will want to sear (brown) all sides of the ribs (don’t worry about the bone side). This should take about 3 min per side. Once all sides of the short ribs have been browned, remove from the pot and set aside.
Your browned short ribs should look something like this:
Drain off most of the excess fat, reserving about 1-2 tbsp in the pot. Add the onions, carrots, and celery and cook over medium heat until the vegetables begin to brown a bit (8-10 min or so).
Once they take on a bit of color, add some of the wine to the pot, increase the heat to high, and deglaze (scrape up) all of the brown bits on the bottom of the pot. Add the short ribs, the rest of the wine, the mushrooms, the rosemary and thyme, and add your stock so that the liquid in the pot covers most (but not all of the meat).
Cover this with a few sheets of aluminum foil…the foil should actually touch the surface of the meat/liquid, then cover with a lid. The extra step of adding the aluminum foil will help to keep moisture in. Place the covered pot into the 325 oven and leave it alone until at least 90 min have passed. You’ll know that the meat is done cooking when it is absolutely fork-tender (there should be no resistance when you insert a fork into the meat). Mine took about 2 hrs in the oven until it reached this point.
After the meat has finished cooked, remove from the pot, wrap securely in aluminum foil and set aside. Strain the cooking liquid into a relatively deep container. I like to reserve the veggies and serve them alongside the meat but from a ‘classical’ standpoint, these vegetables would be discarded. You’ll want the strained cooking liquid to sit for a few minutes, which will allow the fat to rise to the top (if you have a gravy separator, this could be employed here). You are going to want to use the braising liquid (not the fat) as a basis for the sauce to be served over the meat. I used a turkey baster and sucked up the braising liquid (leaving the fat behind) and transferred it to a large saute pan. The next step is to reduce the braising liquid, over high heat, until it begins to thicken. Add the raspberry jam while the sauce is reducing. Ultimately, the final thickness of the sauce is up to you. Mine was nearly the consistency of a thick glaze (maybe about the thickness of maple syrup)…I like when the sauce has just a bit of movement to it. You can also add the short ribs to the pan to coat them with the reduced sauce just before service, which I did.
Why is the salt in the stock such a big issue? Well, during final steps where you’re reducing the braising liquid to create your sauce, you will be concentrating the flavors by cooking out a lot of the excess moisture. If your stock is salty, you will simply be concentrating that saltiness, which will yield an unpalatable and very salty final reduction. In this case, it really does pay to use homemade stock (even if it is a chicken stock), as opposed to something store bought…don’t be fooled by the ‘low-sodium’ label. Water would even be preferable to something store bought, unless you can be assured that your store bought stock has little or no salt/sodium (thanks Alan, for that tip).
