How to Braise Beef Short Ribs - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with how to braise beef short ribs that's right the original name for this video was going to be korean chili apple cider braised short ribs but due to a very surprising shocking and unbelievable ending to the recipe i decided i could not keep that name and what started out as a specific recipe for beef short ribs is now officially a technique video which is fine because if you love beef one of the absolute must-have techniques to master would be how to properly braise beef short ribs and to get started we're going to need to very generously season some english cut short ribs which hopefully look like this and when you're at the meat counter talking to the butcher make sure you're asking for the larger pieces since they all basically have the same size bone in them but we want to make sure there's a ton of meat attached and some of the smaller pieces can be almost half bone and then what we'll do is season these very generously with a lot of salts which really is the only mandatory ingredient but this would be the time to apply whatever else you want and it's probably a little hard to see but i also had a little bit of freshly ground black pepper and cayenne mixed into my salt and then above and beyond that i decided i wanted to use some korean chili paste also known as gochujang and i'm using mother-in-laws and no not the mother-in-laws a mother-in-laws so i transferred on a few spoons of that and i gave that an initial smearing and then besides that incredibly flavorful fermented chili paste i went ahead and tossed in some garlic as well as some sliced celery and onions at which point i took two clean hands and i got in there and i got in there deep and i mixed everything together until i was 100 positive it was thoroughly thoroughly coated including but not limited to every nook and cranny and then once i was sure everything was thoroughly coated i tossed it for another half minute to be really sure at which point we'll cover this in plastic and pop it into the fridge overnight so yes if you want to eat this today you have to start it yesterday and while we could just braise this right now if we wanted it really does benefit tremendously from letting those seasonings soak in overnight so that's what i did and the next day we'll go ahead and pull it out and unwrap it and we'll take our tongs and scrape off any of that aromatic vegetation which we will reserve and use later but at this point what we need to do is brown these pieces of beef over high heat and a little bit of oil and hopefully whatever pan or pot we're going to braise these in and whatever you decide to use should ideally be just big enough to fit in all the beef plus it needs to have a very tight fitting lid and these french style ceramic coated cast iron brazers are really really good for this but a dutch oven or something similar would work and what we want to do here is give these short ribs a nice browning on all sides or as many sides as we can manage which is always going to add more flavor to the operation but it's also going to give our sauce a deeper more beautiful color and i guess if you're in a hurry you could just do the two larger flat sides but if you're in a big hurry why are you braising beef short ribs so personally i do think it's worth spending a few extra minutes to try to get a little brownie on those ends and then once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and remove our short ribs two plates and we'll transfer in all those reserved vegetables from our marinade at which point we'll reduce our heat to medium and then we'll saute that stirring for about three minutes or so or until the onions just start to soften up at which point i'd like to add some tomato paste and that's generally true no matter what i'm flavoring my short ribs with and what that's going to do is add some extra savoriness and acidity and like browning our meat is also going to make our sauce look a lot nicer and what we'll do still on medium is cook this for about two minutes or so or until it starts to stick to and brown onto the bottom of the pan continuing to form what we call in the business a fond f-o-n-d which is all that beautiful caramelization that forms on the bottom of a pan and then what we'll do once our pan is looking fantastic is we will go ahead and deglaze with whatever brazen liquids we're going to use which in my case is two different ones including some hard apple cider or if you want just regular american non-alcoholic cider and then i'll follow that with a little bit of chicken broth plus anything else we feel like flavoring our beef short ribs with and it was right here i decided to hedge my bets i would add another spoon of my korean chili paste and at this point we'll stir everything together and then raise our heat to high and we'll wait for this to come up to a boil because what i like to do is reduce these brazing liquids down by about half before we add our beef back in all right just to reduce the volume a little bit and intensify the flavors oh and i should mention you can if you want to just use an american style non-alcoholic cider but it's been my experience that a little bit of alcohol in the braise really does help elevate all the flavors so you decide i mean you are after all the victor cruz of using booze but anyway like i said we'll go ahead and bring that up to a boil and then cook it stirring occasionally until it reduces by about half at which point we can turn off the heat and transfer our beef short ribs back in oh and if you're wondering how you know you reduced it by exactly half well you don't and you don't need to okay if you reduced it by 60 that would be fine if you reduced it by 40 that would be fine so just get it close that's all we ever ask and then the rest of this brazing technique is very very simple since all we're going to do is go ahead and cover this tightly at which point we're going to transfer it into the center of a 325 degree oven for three hours or until tender but not i repeat not falling apart and other than that the only thing we need to do at the halfway point after about an hour and a half is go ahead and pull this out and uncover it and we will turn each one of our beef short ribs over and by the way if you forgot to or refused to do this step it would probably all still work out fine but i do feel a little better about things knowing each side of that beef got to spend about the same amount of time in that braising liquid so we'll go ahead and turn those over to about the one and a half hour mark and put them back in for another hour and a half or so at which point we'll uncover those and check to make sure they're done and how we know is that a knife or fork will go in with almost no effort okay i didn't say no effort that i think is overcooked but at the same time we should be able to pierce these very very easily which i could which means we can go ahead and grab our tongs and remove those to a plate where we will loosely cover those with foil while we finish our sauce and by finish i mean turn the heat back on to medium-high so we can reduce our braising liquids down for a few more minutes and also that will give us a chance to skim some of the fat off the top if we want which of course is optional and in many cultures very much frowned upon but generally since beef short ribs are nice and rich and fatty i do try to skim off a good amount of it which yes is very very challenging in a shallow pan like this okay to do this properly we would transfer this into a small saucepan which would make it a lot easier but as you can see i couldn't be bothered and since i was going to reduce this for about three or four minutes i figured i had time to get most of it or at least enough of it so i could look my cardiologist in the eye and that's it once our sauce has reduced a little more and we've skimmed off as much fat as we want other than of course checking for seasoning we are ready to serve up our short ribs with our gorgeous sauce ladled over the top and in case you're wondering those are mom's scalloped potatoes served alongside and if you haven't seen that video go check it out and then i finished up with a few sliced green onions because i'd use korean chili paste and that's the rule and i cannot tell you how excited i was to tear into this since i knew the combination of that spicy korean chili and that sweet apple cider was going to be amazing so i went ahead and tore a small bite off the edge so i could get a lot of that braised on goodness and then i dragged it through the sauce and took a bite and i could not have been any more disappointed with the flavor which had nothing to do with the beef short rib right that tasted great and super beefy it really was cooked perfectly what was so shocking and surprising and disappointing is that i couldn't taste any korean chili or apple cider as in none it just tasted like very flavorful beef which is certainly not a bad thing but when you're thinking something's gonna taste of green chili paste and apple cider and then it doesn't it can be a little disconcerting okay if this was advertised as just braised beef short ribs i would have been beyond thrilled and very much enjoyed it but if the menu said korean chili paste cider braised then i might not be as thrilled so i'm not exactly sure what happened but i'm thinking i needed more of everything plus maybe a spoon is something sweet like brown sugar and maybe also a splash of vinegar to bring out the other flavors so i'm gonna have to figure out that part but let's forget about those specific flavors for now and instead focus on how perfectly brazed the short rib was and for me the true indicator isn't that it comes off that bone clean since it will probably do that after just about an hour but for me a short rib is perfectly cooked when that super tough chewy connective tissue that attaches the meat to the bone has completely broken down and gotten soft and succulent and gelatinous mmm gelatinous so to summarize no matter what you flavor your bee short ribs with i think this really is a highly successful method for cooking them which is almost guaranteed to produce you a very very flavorful short rib even if like in this case it was not the flavors you thought you were going to get so if you'll excuse me i'm going to finish this other piece and then head back into the lab to try to figure out what happened but in the meantime i really do hope you give this great technique for beef short ribs a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always [Music] enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 233,967

Rating: 4.9576302 out of 5

Keywords: How to, Braise, Beef, Short Ribs

Id: AzfUHDa78UA

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/grannyhoff]

I couldn’t find the recipe or ingredient list.

[u/kicknschit]

I've made his Peposa recipe numerous times. It's a beef short rib braised in red wine. Im looking forward to trying this.

[u/cardinals5]

Braised beef is brilliant

[u/Mondo3000]

I did this recipe 3 times already. Fantastic. I did it with the mashed potatoes instead. Braised for 5 hours. Killer!