illdothedisheslater

Well I’ve done sauce with pork and sauce with sausage.  Ground beef, veal, pancetta, prosciutto, and meatballs.  Now it’s time for beef: it’s what’s for dinner.

(Can you believe they replaced Sam Elliott with Matthew McConaughey in the beef council commercials?  Do you believe Matthew McConaughey ever eats, like, a burger?  I believe Sam Elliot does – I think he probably grills a steak for breakfast.  Every breakfast.  Mr. McC, however, probably exists on raw foods and quinoa.   Not that it doesn’t do his body good or anything, but his down-home Texan drawl isn’t enough to convince me he’s actually eating the stuff.  Update: a visit to Google tells me that the McConaughey wedding served “Brazilian steak, chicken wrapped in bacon and pork sausages and cheese bread”.  I withdraw my objections.)

Today’s recipe, while somewhat original, was created from America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe.  Although I’ve changed and adapted it, and no longer remember their steps or quantities.  They still get credit for most of it though.  Here are the ingredients:

1.5 lbs. boneless short ribs

1 large can crushed tomatoes

½ small can beef broth (not pictured)

½ medium onion, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 cup of red wine

Olive oil, salt, and pepper.

That’s it!  It will, of course, be served over noodles, but this is a very simple recipe – plain cooking without a lot of fancy stuff.  The flavor comes with time, not stuff.

Now short ribs:  boneless (or Western, or country-style) short ribs are most likely not short ribs at all.  There’s not a lot of meat between the bones, so when you buy big gorgeous thick slabs of beef, it’s most likely chuck roast, or some other lesser cut that needs a lot of braising to get tender.  They just get cut into rib-looking pieces.  And these were cut so strangely (with the grain, against the grain, diagonally) that it’s truly unlikely they’ve ever even been in contact with a rib.  Probably chuck, and that’s just fine.

Heat oil til almost smoking in a metal pan – no non-stick/easy clean up today.  Salt the meat and pat it dry, then lay it in the pan – it should sizzle, spit, and mess up the stove.  Sear well on each side.

Then lower the heat and add your onions.  Use a sturdy plastic or wooden spoon to scrape up the brown bits (fond) that cling to the bottom of the pan.  They will look “done” almost immediately, from picking up the brown bits and juices, but keep cooking until they’re soft and translucent.  Add your garlic and, as always, just give it a minute to start smelling truly great, but don’t let it burn.   Add the red wine and beef broth, and let it simmer for 10 or 15 minutes.  Now the house smells like onion, garlic, beef, and red wine.  I’m a happy girl.  Less happy is my husband who, I swear to gawd, is watching “National Treasure” like it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do.  (He’s got a sinus headache and doesn’t want to budge from the couch, so I forgive him.)  I watched about 10 minutes before I figured out that in the end the characters would all realize that the real treasure was the adventures they’d shared and the good friends they made along the way.  Am I close?

So now we have a lumpy purple slurry.  Yum.

Empty one large can of crushed tomatoes into a dutch oven, and top with the slurry.  Nestle the meat into the pot and top with any accumulated beef juice the ribs may have shed.

This goes into a low (300) oven forever.  Like 4-6 hours.   By the way, I probably should have mentioned that this isn’t a recipe to start at 5:00 p.m. if you plan to eat it for dinner that night.  It takes, as previously mentioned, like forever.  Any recipe that tells you to braise for 1 to 2 hours is probably lying (depending on the type, cut, and thickness of meat of course.) When they start to get tender, offset the lid a bit to let the sauce evaporate and reduce.  Eventually the meat will become fork tender.  At this point the sauce is dark and thick – exuberantly flavored by the meat.

It’s rich and meaty.  I love it.  I like to serve it over a hearty chewy noodle like rigatoni.  Here’s the finished product – so simple I’m not even going to fancy it up with cheese or basil.