How to cook shortribs - with brilliant leftovers

Just before winter finally disappears (although looks like I may already have missed the boat) here's a wonderfully warming dish of braised beef shortribs I made last weekend when I was having a bit of freezer clearout. To be honest I'd forgotten about them - as you do. They were a bargain I'd picked up in one of our local Bristol butchers Ruby & White for under £10, I seem to remember. Impressive as there was enough for two generous meals.

First I followed the recipe below from The Frugal Cook which gave us two socking great ribs to feast on on Sunday night. I left them in the AGA overnight, cooled and skimmed them the following morning then reheated them for dinner along with some roast carrots.

You don't have to use a whole bottle of wine for the dish (I'm lucky enough to have a ridiculous number of open bottles due to the day job) - if you replace half with stock it will still be delicious - but more gravy-like.

Braised beef short-ribs
Short-rib is a classic American and French cut which used to be quite hard to find but which is increasingly widely available. They’re thick chunky wedges of beef on the bone and need long slow cooking.

Serves 4-6
2 tbsp oil
1.2kg beef short ribs
2 medium onions, peeled and roughly chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
2 level tbsp tomato purée
1 rounded tbsp plain flour
600-700ml full-bodied red wine or wine and stock combined + an extra half glassful
2 sprigs of thyme
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large ovenproof pan or casserole and brown the ribs on all sides. Set aside. Turn the heat down and fry the chopped onions and carrots in the oil until beginning to soften (about 7-8 minutes). Stir in the garlic and tomato puree and cook for a minute over a low heat then stir in the flour. Gradually add 500ml red wine then heat, stirring, until the sauce has thickened. Season with salt and pepper. Return the ribs to the pan, adding enough extra wine, stock or water to ensure they’re covered with sauce and bring to the boil. Turn the heat right down and simmer on the lowest possible heat or transfer the casserole to a low oven (140°C/275°F/Gas 1) for 3 1/2 to 4 hours until the meat is falling off the bone. Check the casserole every hour or so to make sure it isn’t cooking too fast. The surface should barely tremble. Remove from the heat and cool then refrigerate overnight. Skim the fat off the surface of the casserole then return the ribs to the liquid in the casserole. Add another half glassful of red wine and reheat slowly.

The following night I made the dish I'd actually been gagging to make - a simplified version of the beef shin macaroni (aka macaronnade) in the Hawksmoor at Home cookbook in which I had a hand. You simply shred the remaining meat and fold it and the sauce - of which you need a fair bit - into some freshly cooked short or 'elbow' macaroni. The kind you use for macaroni cheese. I bought mine loose in a shop called Scoopaway in Gloucester Road.

Then you layer it up in an ovenproof dish with a good sprinkle of freshly grated parmesan between each layer and bake it at about 190°C for half an hour or so. About 60-75g of parmesan in total - you need to be quite generous with it. I won't say it's the world's most beautiful dish (not helped by this murky low-lit photo) but it is insanely good. Like the best spag bol you've ever tasted. Feeds 4.

The new cheap cuts: tips from The Ginger Pig

All of us I guess like to think of our meat coming from a farm where the animals graze freely and are well looked after but few can have such a good life as at the Ginger Pig. I visited one of their three farms up near Pickering in North Yorkshire the other day and it made me feel I never wanted to buy supermarket meat again.

The problem is good meat is pricey - too pricey for most families to afford you’d think but in actual fact so long as you avoid the prime cuts - and, ironically, the humble cuts that have become so fashionable like pork belly and lamb shanks there are bargains to be found.

Who would have thought that topside and silverside were among the best-priced joints on the butchers’ slab these days but according to farmer Tim Wilson everyone wants ribs. And pork legs are better value than belly. He also told me he can hardly give away lambs’ liver and hearts so reluctant are we to eat offal.


My own view is that we’d all be better off if we ate less meat and saved it, as our grandparents did, for a once a week treat - with leftovers if you were lucky. And if we took the advice of our local butcher rather than a telly chef and only decided what to make once we found out what was cheap that week. That means being more flexible about what we cook and eat - not easy in a generation of fussy eaters. (I’m not being holier than thou here. At least two of my children wouldn’t touch offal.)

Another problem is that not everyone lives close to a butcher these days but I reckon if you ring up one of the many online suppliers and tell them you’re looking for good value cuts they’ll respond. And if you band together with some neighbours on a delivery it shouldn’t cost too much. At the time of writing, for example, Sheepdrove has an offer on organic pork shoulder at £6.40 a kilo (though I’m amused to see they lump offal with ‘doggy bags’. Hardly encouraging . . .)


And if you’re lucky to live within striking distance of one of Tim’s Ginger Pig shops - in Borough Market, Marylebone and Hackney - you can drop by and see what he's got. He was telling me about a cut called lamb 'Henrys' which is a shoulder of lamb divided into about five or six big chunks, which he says is cheaper than buying lamb shanks and can be cooked exactly the same way. You’ll find more suggestions in his forthcoming book The Ginger Pig Meat Book which is written with a cookery writer friend of mine, Fran Warde. (Quick plug there for Tim and Fran.)

So what’s your attitude to buying meat and how often do you eat it? Do you buy direct from the farmer, from a butcher or do you mainly use the supermarket? (Incidentally Tim said that he thinks that Morrisons has the best meat of the big chains) What are your favourite cheap cuts?


March 1st
I actually did call by the Ginger Pig's Borough Market shop the other day. Disappointingly they didn't have much in the way of cheap topside and silverside but there were some great pork bargains including pork ribs for £4.95 a kilo, hand of pork for £5.95 a kilo and pork hocks for £3.80 each. (I'm sure you could find them cheaper out of London that's fair for rare breed pork). They also - impressively - knew what Lamb Henrys were!

Chilly con Carne

I don't know about you but this weather is making me crave rib-sticking soups and stews and I suddenly really fancied making a chilli or - maybe more appropriately - Chilly con Carne.

I was thinking of making this south-west American version (in the rather messy, quickly snatched photo, above) which I included in my beer book An Appetite for Ale and which uses chopped rather than ground beef. What clinched it was finding a one and a half kilo joint of top rump in the Co-op reduced to £3.72 instead of £9 odd a kilo for braising beef. (There was even enough left over to make another stew.)

My original (for which I've given the recipe below) used a mild chile called Chile Molido from Santa Fe which gives a particularly good rich texture but as I didn't have any left I used a tablespoon of mild chilli powder, a heaped teaspoon of sweet pimenton, a teaspoon of hot pimenton and about the same of some smokey ground chile I brought back from Chile earlier this year. (You can buy Chile Molido aka New Mexican Red from the Spice Shop in Blenheim Crescent or online if you want a more authentic south-western flavour)

I also used 2 tins of kidney beans rather than cooking them from scratch because I couldn't face going out in the cold to buy some!

Serves 6

For the beans
250g dried red kidney beans
1 bayleaf
1 tsp epazote - a Mexican herb which is often used for cooking beans (optional)
A few black peppercorns

Or use 2 x 400g tins of red kidney beans

For the chile
5-6 tbsp sunflower or other cooking oil
800g-1kg braising steak, topside or top rump, whatever's cheapest
2 onions (about 250g in total), peeled and roughly chopped
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
1 heaped tbsp tomato paste
5-6 tbsp chile molido (or a mixture of mild and hotter chile as described above - about 2-3 tbsp in total. You want something, ideally to give it a smoky edge)
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 level tbsp plain flour
300ml beef stock
175ml lager (optional - you could just add extra stock but it gives it an edge)
1 tbsp cider vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Soak the beans overnight in cold water. Drain them, cover with fresh cold water and bring to the boil. Skim off any scum and boil hard for 10 minutes then turn the heat down and add the bayleaf, peppercorns and epazote if using (it flavours the beans and makes them less flatulent!). Cook for about an hour to an hour and a quarter until the beans are tender, topping up with boiling water as necessary. Set aside till the chile is cooked.

Meanwhile pat the meat dry, remove any fat or gristle and cut into very small cubes. Pour a little of the oil into a frying pan and brown the meat in batches, transferring it to a casserole as you complete each batch.

Add the remaining oil (you’ll need about 3 tbsp) and fry the onions until soft but not coloured. Add the crushed garlic, cook for a minute then stir in the flour, 2-5 tbsp of ground chile (see above) and 1 1/2 tsp cumin.

Cook for a few seconds then add the stock and lager, if using, and bring to the boil. Pour the sauce over the meat, stir well, bring back to the boil then turn the heat right down and simmer for 2 hours or so till the meat is tender adding a little water if the sauce gets too thick.

Drain the beans and add to the meat and cook for another half hour. Taste the sauce and add a few drops of cider vinegar and a little more chilli powder just to lift the flavour. Serve with baked potatoes and homemade coleslaw or corn or wheat tortillas and an avocado salsa.

* Actually if you can leave this overnight and reheat it it tastes even better. Like most stews.

What's your favourite way of making chilli? And favourite way of serving it?