2012 Cooking Club Week 46: Slow-braised beef short rib with red wine gravy

Kimia

This is such a simple dish and it's a bowl full of comfort on a cold wintry day. It's also one of the easiest dinners to prepare but the tastes are delicious.

Start with your ingredients:

• Red Wine (any type)
• Beef stock
• Red Onion
• Garlic
• Beef short ribs (Or any type of braising meat - lamb shoulder works very well with this, pork shoulder too! Just try to get someone with bones/bone-in)
• Olive Oil
• Bisto Original Gravy (for thickening)

Start by preparing your meat - I just chopped mine into more manageable pieces for frying:



Season them well with salt and pepper to your taste and sear them in a very hot pan. No matter what type of meat you are using - sear it well. It will give the meat that extra depth of flavour like the below (Excuse the image quality)



Chop your red onion and line the pan like so:



Place the seared meat on top and pour a good glug of red wine into the pan. I don't really measure but it's about 1/4 of a bottle. Meanwhile have the kettle boiling for your beef stock cube and when that's done, add that liquid to the pan too. It's at this point that I usually add some garlic - this can either be paste (coz it's handy) or raw garlic cloves, either would work well.

Put the lid on, or if you have no lid, seal your braising tray/pot/dish with tin foil, and place in an oven at 150/160 degrees. Leave for about 3 hours, but check in after maybe 1 or 2 hours to ensure that your liquid hasn't evaporated. It shouldn't but I have a vague memory that this happened to me before so keep an eye.

It comes out like this:



The bones will be falling out of it, and the juices will smell out of this world. What I usually do now is take a soup ladle and get all that juice/wine/stock and put it in a little saucepan like this:



I add some Bisto (only original) gravy - the one where you have to mix the powder with water before hand, to give it some body, and then you have a delicious gravy ready to go.

I serve with mash and green beans - here's the finished result:



Enjoy!

Tom Dunne

I'm salivating at the thought of this.

hdowney

I think I might do this, but possibly with Lamb Shanks or something

Kimia

I've done it with lamb shanks, and it's even more delicious than beef. Enjoy!

hdowney

So I made this tonight in the slow cooker with Lamb Shanks. I had far to much cooking liquor left over so Wasn't the best. I think I also used too much wine It was my first ever use of my slow cooker though so I don't think it was too bad

Faith

hdowney wrote: »

So I made this tonight in the slow cooker with Lamb Shanks. I had far to much cooking liquor left over so Wasn't the best. I think I also used too much wine It was my first ever use of my slow cooker though so I don't think it was too bad

No evaporation occurs in a slow cooker, so you need to substantially reduce the liquid. How long did you cook it for? The recipe cooks at 160 for 3 hours - a slow cooker cooks at 80-100 degrees afaik. You'd need to cook it for a much longer time in the slow cooker.

annamcmahon

I cook shanks in the sc. Only use a teacup of wine and a splash of stock. I use the wine to deglaze the pan before adding it to the sc. The alcohol isn't cooked off in the sc. I cook them on high for 6 hours

hattoncracker

Sooo gonna try this today but having trouble sourcing the beef short ribs.. Anyone know of any butchers in limerick selling them?

hdowney

Ah. Reduce liquid. Cheers. First time EVER using a slow cooker, hadn't a clue. The shanks were grand cooked, although I wouldn't have minded them cooked longer, but the mammy kept whinging that they'd be rotten!!! Next time I'll tell her to pish off and do it for as long as I want. I think they were 4 1/2 hours on high. I wasn't sure at all about the liquid. I was afraid it'd cook off, I have heard of that happening. I didn't want to be peeling shank and onion off the crockpot for ages!!! Thanks for the tips. I'll try it again soon with CONSIDERABLY less liquid, and also see can I source the Ribs

annamcmahon

No liquid comes off. I cook shanks on high for 6-8hours depending on how long I'm out for. I don't brown them. The bone falls out and you can break the meat with a teaspoon.

Kimia

hdowney wrote: »

Ah. Reduce liquid. Cheers. First time EVER using a slow cooker, hadn't a clue. The shanks were grand cooked, although I wouldn't have minded them cooked longer, but the mammy kept whinging that they'd be rotten!!! Next time I'll tell her to pish off and do it for as long as I want. I think they were 4 1/2 hours on high. I wasn't sure at all about the liquid. I was afraid it'd cook off, I have heard of that happening. I didn't want to be peeling shank and onion off the crockpot for ages!!! Thanks for the tips. I'll try it again soon with CONSIDERABLY less liquid, and also see can I source the Ribs

Oh I've never done this in a slow cooker, I don't think it would work the same at all. Sorry you had a bad experience, I can only imagine the horrible winy taste

Try it next time with either shanks or even chunks of beef in a saucepan and fire it into the oven at 150 for 3 hours. It'll be yum!