Craft: Short Ribs Braised in Red Wine

I am dreadfully sorry for the weeklong silence on my end. Break is over and I am back at Wellesley College for my final semester. The first week is always chaos, but now with my classes sorted and my life back in order I find the need to make this dish. I am throwing a small dinner party tonight to say thank you to my friends for four years of solidarity. For four years of love and support, for sticking together through the heartache and for enriching and bringing purpose to one another and to myself. Thank you ladies for being wildly intelligent, quirky, driven and sometimes-infuriating Wellesley Women who will. I would not have made it this far without you, I would not be the person I am today without your influence. Now, enough gushing, back to food!

Braised Short Ribs

(Here served with Truffle Polenta)

If I love you, and want to make you happy, this is what I will make you. It is one of those perfect dishes. The kind that fills the room with a beefy redolence perfumed with cinnamon and thyme. It is the kind of bouquet I wish I could wear on my body (and I often do, as the smell tends to cling to my hair). It is the kind of smell that makes you mad with yearning as you look at your watch: just an hour and a half longer…

Ingredients

1/3 c extra-virgin olive oil

2 stalks celery, chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 large onion, chopped

1 leek (white part only) cleaned, thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, finely diced

5 cups chicken stock (homemade if you have it, if not, try to find organic unsalted)

Fleur De Sel and freshly ground black pepper

3 lbs grass-fed beef short ribs (bone in) brought to room temperature

1/3 c unbleached all-purpose flour

1 ½ c red wine (I used a powerful, full bodied, syrah with just a hint of truffle)

1 ¼ c tomato purée

5 sprigs fresh thyme

2 cinnamon sticks

2 Turkish bay leaves (if large, just use one)

a pinch of fennel pollen (optional)

Method

1. Heat oven to 300 degrees

2. I like to put parchment paper over my short ribs while they cook. Doing this traps the moisture against the surface of the sauce, if the moisture can’t escape it seeps into the ribs. The result: literally melt-in-your-mouth short ribs. To do this take your Dutch oven (mine is 5-quarts, yours should be too) or braising pot and place it upside-down on a sheet of parchment paper.

3. Next, using scissors, cut around the pot, leaving a ¼ to ½ inch boarder, like so:

Put the parchment paper aside.

4. Using your Dutch oven heat three tablespoons of the olive oil on medium low. When aromatic tip the celery, carrots, onion, leek and garlic in and turn the heat up to medium high.

5. When the vegetables are lightly browned transfer them to a bowl. Using some of the chicken stock deglaze the Dutch oven, scrapping up the bits clinging to the bottom and sides. Poor the mixture, browned bits and all, into the bowl with the cooked vegetables. This should take about 10 minutes.

In the beginning it should look like this:

Afterwards it should look like this:

Wipe out your Dutch oven with a paper towel.

6. Now, inspect your short ribs. Remove any gristle or excess fat (but leave a good amount on as it tenderizes the meat). When buying your ribs make sure you see what you are getting. You want big meaty ones with large layers of fat running through. Do not be afraid to tell your butcher one particular rib is not meaty enough, be picky about your ingredients. Again, please do not hack away at the fat, I beseech you. A little fat only serves to enrich the world, that is rule number one in fight club.

7. Pat the ribs dry with a paper towel and salt and pepper those bad boys.

8. Put the Dutch oven back on the stove over medium low heat with about three tablespoons of olive oil (if you are uncomfortable you may use grapeseed oil. It has a higher smoking point so it is less likely to burn)

9. Dredge the ribs. To do this, put them in the flour and push it up over all the surfaces with your hands. Once they are completely covered I like to smack them around a bit (it gets off all the excess). You just want a light coating, let's not go crazy.

10. Brown the meat on all sides. Without crowding the pot, you might need to work in batches, arrange the meat so that the ribs are not touching. If they are too close together they will steam rather than brown, no good. When you lower the meat to the oil, listen. You should hear a sizzle once it makes contact, if it sizzles that means the oil is hot enough. Use your senses, let the meat tell you when it wants to be turned. You can smell the fat melting, the meat crusting: it hangs rich and heavy in the air. If the meat sticks to the bottom of the pot, it is not ready to be turned. Be gentle, nudge it, if it lifts you have permission flip it to another side.

(please excuse the pictures, our dorm stove has no light)

11. Once browned, place the ribs, one by one, into a bowl. Deglaze with the red wine. There will be steam; you might run around batting fire alarms with your Geoscience text book. You will curse, you will bargain, you quite possibly might be the driving force behind mass exodus from the building. This too shall pass. Eventually, the steam dies down and you are free to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Reduce by a third.

12. Add everything, sans fennel pollen, to the pot. Bring to an energetic simmer. Bringing it to a simmer means that it does not need to come up to temperature in the oven (which takes ages), decreasing cooking time without sacrificing tenderness or flavor.

13. Place the parchment paper over the ribs.

14. Then the lid.

15. Braise for two hours; don’t bother it. Trust me, you will want to, but resist the temptation to sneak a taste. You are trying to make a seal, prevent moisture from escaping, and probing spoons break that seal.

16. When the two hours are up remove the Dutch oven and check on the ribs. They are done when they shrink away from the bone.

For all you weight watchers, yes, there will be a thick layer of fat on the surface of the sauce. Skim it off. Personally, I like to let everything sit and marinate overnight in the fridge. It makes for way more flavorful ribs and far easier fat removal the next day.

17. When you take your short ribs out of the fridge the next day, do not be alarmed. The weird orangeish solid coating is normal. Fat solidifies at much higher temperatures than water so it all turns into a solid coating at the surface of the stew. Makes for easy removal.

just spoon it off!

18. Once the fat is removed take the short ribs from the sauce and place them in a bowl. Leave them there until they come to room temperature (about an hour).

19. At this point return the sauce to the stove, over medium heat, and bring it up to temperature slowly.

20. Once the short ribs reach room temperature, and the sauce is at a low simmer, rip the short ribs apart. You can use two forks, or, if you are like me, get elbow deep and use your bare hands. It is way more satisfying.

21. Hands smelling of cinnamon, return the carnage to the Dutch oven and let it slowly come to temperature. This gives you time to deal with the tricky business: vegetarians and polenta. When hot, add a pinch of fennel pollen and serve over truffle polenta. Garnish with chopped parsley and citrus zest. Today I used orange.

fin.

Here we have a vegetarian (on the left) working right alongside me, (a definite carnivore). Love appears in the most unlikely of places.

When organizing this event I received several emails: "What should I bring!?" I responded with: "We are low on wine and desert". The result? Five bottles of wine, no dessert. I would expect nothing less from a Wellesley Woman.