I always see braised short ribs on menus at nice restaurants and they are always pretty darn expensive. What those restaurant menu psychologists don’t want you to know is that it’s way easy to make braised short ribs at home. They’re hard to screw up, they come out looking delicious and they actually get better the next day and the day after that. Wild, right? I don’t brine my ribs for any length of time beforehand but you definitely can, although for a nice home cooked meal, I don’t think it’s necessary. Read on for my recipe.
You will need:
- 2 beef short ribs per person, minimum, cleaned and dried (Grass Fed if you can!!)
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 stalk of celery cut into 1/2 inch lengths
- 4-8 large carrots cut into 1/8 – 1/4 inch rounds
- olive oil
- small can tomato paste
- 1 box chicken stock
- 1 box beef stock
- 1 bottle dry red wine
- 5 shallots or 1 yellow onion, diced
- about a tablespoon flour
- italian parsley to garnish
First, get out a big huge deep pan or a large Le Crucet Pot, cover the bottom in olive oil and heat it up over medium to high heat. Dump in your shallots or onion — I prefer to use shallots — the carrots, the celery and the garlic. Mix everything up so the oil covers everything and then let it all caramelize without stirring, about 8 minutes.
While your caramelizing, heat up another shallow pan. Season the ribs with salt and pepper on all sides and then sear them quickly on each side until it is slightly browned — maybe 25 seconds a side. Set them aside.
Once your veggies have caramelized, add in 3 tablespoons of the tomato paste — if you like tomato, add the whole can. Add about half the wine, half the veal stock and half the chicken stock. Bring it to a boil and then add in your meat, nestling it nicely into the veggies. Add more stock and wine until the meat is almost covered. It can stick out a bit but try to make sure it’s mostly submersed. Cover it and cook it at 275 degrees for 3.5 hours, or 300 degrees at 2 3/4 hours. Really you just want the meat to cook slowly in the broth at a low temperature for a long time. The meat should be falling off the bone when they’re ready.
Take the ribs, bones, and as much of the celery and carrot out of what’s left of the sauce as you can, set it aside and cover it. Heat the sauce over medium-high heat and stir occasionally. You want to reduce it as much as you can and for as long as you can. I usually do it for about 25 minutes. Now is when you can sprinkle in some of the flower while stirring to thicken the sauce. After a while, it should reduce into a thick, ridiculously fragrant, brown sauce.
Quickly re-heat the ribs over low heat, top with the reserved veggies, sauce and a few pieces of Italian parsley and serve.
On a side-note, if you’re roasting potatoes, chop off the top of a garlic clove, sprinkle with olive oil and throw it in. It’s a real easy way to make spreadable garlic for garlic bread….
