This is one of my favorite dishes of all time. Braised short ribs in red wine. I absolutely love them. Not just the tender, fall away from the bone meat, and the rich red wine sauce, but also the simplicity of the cooking. Nothing fancy, one pot, go out for the day and it’s ready when you come home.

Don’t they look fantastic! Just delicious and yummy. I can’t say anything else barring showing you how to cook them…

1. Get the ingredients together

As always, I strongly recommend you get all of the ingredients together. There aren’t that many really and, as this is a casserole, there is no fancy stuff. For the vegetables just roughly chop them. They’re there to add flavor and to be a nice tasty mouthful to accompany the beef.

You do need a bouquet garni. Now, you can buy these ready-made but I make my own. The ready-made ones are just a bag of dried herbs and I find they really don’t provide that much flavor. Making your own is simple and all you need is some celery, parsley, thyme and bay leaf. I have a short tutorial on how to make these so just click on the picture on the right and you’ll see how easy it is.

A final word about the short ribs themselves, and the wine. I personally think half a rib per person is fine providing you going to serve some other side dishes with the short ribs, for example, mashed potato. Ask your butcher to cut each rib into 4 and the serve two to each person. The butcher will need to do this for you because a saw is needed to get through the bone.

Regarding the wine, don’t use anything expensive but try and use a good strong tasting red wine. A Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon will do just fine.

2. Make the casserole ready for slow cooking

To make the casserole you need to start by braising the short ribs. These means seasoning them and browning them off in your casserole dish. All sides of the short ribs should be browned and this will take around 6-8 minutes.

Once browned remove the short ribs from the casserole dish and leave on the side. Tip away most of the fat in the pot and then add the onions, carrots, and celery. Fry these off, whilst stirring, until the onions start to brown. Now add the flour and coat the vegetables with the flour. Then add the wine and short ribs and mix all together.

Now keep stirring the pot intermittently until half of the wine has reduced. Then simply add the rest of the ingredients, including the bouquet garni. Finally, pour in the beef stock.

Stir the stock into the rest of the ingredients and then you are basically ready to put the lid on and place the pot in the oven.

3. Slow-cook the short ribs

Put the pot in a pre-heated oven at 160C / 140C Fan and leave. A word about the timing. I say 6 hours but you could also leave it for more. Just add a little more stock to ensure it doesn’t dry up.  Especially if you plan on going out for the day.

Also, note that although I say to leave these short ribs to slow-cook for 6 or more hours you could serve after 2-3 hours if you keep the heat at about 200C / 180C Fan. The only thing is that they will not be as tender. The golden rule is the longer the cooking at a lower temperature the more tender the meat will be.

However long you decide to slow-cook it, once cooked take out from the oven and remove the garlic, bouquet garni and any rosemary stalks. Then leave to rest for 10 minutes.

Now you are ready to serve. Just take 2 ribs per person and serve in a bowl with a couple of spoonfuls of the gravy and the vegetables. I made some mashed potato to accompany the ribs but you can choose whatever you want. It’s a very flexible dish and absolutely yummy!

OK, that’s it for today my Fine Foodie Friends. Braised short ribs in red wine for your tasting pleasure. Give it a go yourselves. Let me know if you do. I’d love to hear how you get on.

 

If you like this recipe then why not try one of The Yum Yum Club’s many others, like those below…

As always, many thanks for reading and until next time…Steve.

 

 

4. Printable recipe