It’s officially snowing here in Chicago, which means it’s officially braised short rib season! Tender beef, falling apart in its own juices, with soft, vinegary golden potatoes nestled on the sides. Now that’s what I call snowy weather food! I thoroughly enjoyed cooking and eating this meal. Despite the number of steps involved, anyone can make this if they’re willing to read instructions. Oh, and you’ll need a lot of time. This one takes at least 4 hours to make (though just over 3 of those hours are inactive).
The first 45 minutes are dedicated to the following: Searing the meat until “deeply golden on all sides.” There’s a lot of leftover fat at the end of this process (short ribs just have a lot of fat!) so be ready with an old pickle jar or something to drain the excess fat, reserving some for the potatoes. The potatoes, cut in half, spend time in the fat to get a crispy edge to them while the meat stands to the side. Once the potatoes are done, they join the meat so the onion and garlic can take their turns. The onions get a toasty brown color before an onslaught of seeds rain down on the pot: coriander, fennel, cumin, red pepper flakes, and some cinnamon. Bring on those seeds and let ‘em toast! Next, tomato paste (I’d include one more tablespoon than what’s called for next time) plop in to caramelize, followed by vinegar (this makes the potatoes taste as great as they do!), broth, and lemon. Once the liquid is back at a simmer, the meat and potatoes get tightly nestled in the pot before hopping into the oven.
The next 2 hours and 45 minutes are spent smelling the increasingly strong and delicious scents of dinner wafting through your apartment. That’s a long time to smell a good smell!
For the final 30 minutes, the oven temperature gets a big boost and the lid to the pot is removed so the contents can thicken up. Alison says it’ll become a “rich sauce” but mine was more like a “rich liquid.” I just didn’t have the patience to wait for it to thicken, I guess. The meat was falling off the bone, and the potatoes were impossibly soft, which is all I truly cared about.
This dish was delicious. My only tweaks would be to add more tomato paste, and possibly more lemon (maybe squeezing out a bit of its juice) to give it a stronger acidic quality. And of course, flaky sea salt is a MUST.
167 recipes cooked, 58 to go.
