Peposo - Tuscan Black Pepper Beef - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with pop oh so that's right this amazing black pepper beef is as delicious as its history is interesting since it was invented by terracotta tile workers as a way to cook beef cuts that were very very tough and often a very substandard quality as in not even close to fresh but by cooking it with a ton of black pepper and wine and garlic they produce something that was still incredibly delicious so you can imagine how good this is going to be using high quality beef which is exactly what we're going to use and while beef shanks would be the more traditional cut i'm gonna use these beef short ribs which i think are absolutely perfect for this recipe so I have six of these which is going to be just about three pounds and to start this what we're gonna do is season these very generously with kosher salts okay very generously these are big hunks of meat and we're gonna do that on all sides and to save time I'm just going to show you the first and last side but you'll want to solve those all over and then once our beef is salted what we'll want to do is just let it sit there in the bowl while we move on to prep our garlic paste and I'm going to do that by crushing these roughly chopped garlic cloves in this mortar along with a big pinch of salt all right feel free to use a garlic press if you want but this thing works much better and you really do need to have one of these in your kitchen so we'll go ahead and pound their garlic until it's basically a paste at which point speaking of paste we're gonna add about a tablespoon of tomato paste and we will go ahead and smash that in oh by the way tomato paste would not have been found in the original recipe since this dish predates Columbus coming to America and most people don't realize that before that there were actually no tomatoes in Italy but anyway enough with the history lesson once our garlic tomato mixture is done we'll go ahead and transfer that onto our beef and then using one or more bare hands we will go ahead and Asajj that all over the surface and again I'm editing for time but make sure you're very thorough and the rub in that stuff into every nook and of course every cranny and then what we'll do once our beef is coated with our garlic mixture is move on to probably the most important ingredient our black pepper and for this recipe we're going to be using two kinds well use some good old-fashioned four ashlee ground as well as a couple tablespoons of peppercorns that were gonna freshly crush and to do that I like to use the bottom of a small frying pan on my cutting board just sort of press and rub and rub and press and you'll see in just a few seconds all those peppercorns will be crushed and while it's true you can buy cracked black peppercorns the flavor you release by doing it this way is significantly more intense and fragrant and for this dish in particular well worth the extra minute of work and then what we'll do at this point is go ahead and add that to our beef along with a nice big spoon of regular freshly ground black pepper and we'll go ahead and mix that all together until the meats coated and thanks to our garlic paste it should stick to the surface nicely oh by the way if you're worried about biting into those big chunks of black peppercorn don't be because this is gonna braise for so long by the time the beef is tender so are those pieces of pepper and then what we'll do once our beef has been properly peppered is transfer it into our pan or pot bone side down and by the way how is there not a band with that name yet but anyway we're gonna transfer those in bone side down and then believe it or not I decide to add a little more freshly ground black pepper to the top and I'd love to tell you why but I really don't have a good reason so I did a little more over the top and then at this point we're gonna add a little bit of fresh herb I'm gonna poke in three or four sage leaves here and there whoops there and we'll also add three or four small sprigs of rosemary at which point we can carefully pour in our red wine and while a couple cups of any dry red wine would work since this recipe is from the Chianti region that's where I suggest using the food gods love that kind of stuff and that'll help that they look favorably upon this dish so I'm gonna go ahead and add a couple cups of wine at which point we're gonna head over the stove and place this over high heat because we want to bring it up to a simmer in any deep pan like this is gonna work great or even something like a Dutch oven just make sure it has a tight-fitting lid since that's kind of important and as you know anytime I'm waiting for something to come up to a simmer I'm always trying to remember what I forgot and in this case it was a couple days leaves so I went ahead and poke those in and then what we'll do as soon as it starts to simmer is reduce our heat to low cover this and cook it for about three and a half hours or so or until fork-tender and of course your times may vary and probably will but don't worry if you have a fork you're going to be able to test it and what I like to do with the one and a half hour mark is uncover it and turn those on their side and then I'll recover it let it simmer for about another thirty minutes or so and then turn them over to the opposite side and that's pretty much how it's going to go until these are done so we're just letting them simmer gently turning them over every maybe half hour or so which for obvious reasons I'm going to edit some of that out and by the way if you're turning it one of the bones comes out do not worry totally normal and we're gonna pull those out anyway which reminds me they do saw something called boneless beef short rib that would work here but I really do think the bone adds a lot of flavor so for that reason I almost always buy the bone-in short ribs but anyway we will let these continue to simmer cover it on low turning occasionally until as I said they're fork-tender and do not under any circumstances stop simmering knees until you can push a fork and easily okay why some people stop I'll never understand so I gave mine a test and they felt just right and once that happens we'll go ahead and remove that meat to a bowl to rest and then once we've DBF the pan we're gonna turn our heat to high and reduce those bracing liquids down by about half or until they just slightly thicken up and since that's gonna take a few minutes while we're waiting we can go ahead and pull those rib bones out of our meat we should slide out very easily and if they don't they're not cooked but these were and then as usual while our sauce is boiling you can always go ahead and skim some of that fat off the top although in most parts of the world that would be considered a mistake and generally frowned upon but anyway if you're keeping score at home I did remove some and as I said will let that reduce down about by half or until it thickens and this is what mine looked like when I got to that point and other than tasting that sauce for seasoning we are pretty much done all we need to do is transfer our me back in and baste it with that hot sauce and once that meat is nice and hot again that's it we are pretty much ready to serve and yes you can absolutely do this ahead and just reheat it and it probably comes out even better but anyway I was starving so I went ahead and served some up on some polenta and of course spooned over plenty of that dark dangerous-looking sauce and while this is amazing on polenta rice or pasta also works wonderfully so exactly what you serve this with will be up to you you guys are after all the virtuosos of your proposed o's and then i finished up with a sprig of rosemary so I could take a couple pictures and that's it my take on this ancient black pepper braised beef is done and ready to tear it into literally all right as I go in for a taste here the knife is mostly for show you really should be able to tear this meat apart with a fork and to say this stuff is flavorful really does not do it justice alright when you take that first bite you're gonna wonder if there's too much black pepper but by the time you're taking your second you know it's not too much it is the perfect amount since this balance beautifully with the acidity from the wine which also gets a little bit sweet once it reduces not to mention all that garlic and a little touch of herb so this really is a truly unique and intensely tasty dish and again I will say it one more time do not stop cooking those short ribs until you can pull them apart with a fork like this alright that's really the only way to screw this up but anyway that's it my take on po po so you're welcome black pepper companies I hope your inventories are well stocked so whether you're using this recipe to cover a bad beef which I really hope you're not or use some beautifully fresh short ribs like I did I really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to food whooshes calm for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,669,095

Rating: 4.9258018 out of 5

Keywords: Peposo, Tuscan, Black, Pepper, Beef, Food, Wishes, chef, john, meat, italian, peppercorn, chianti, wine, garlic, short ribs, dinner, easy, stew, braise

Id: 7qmt9rup6_I

Length: 8min 58sec (538 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/bigneacy]

I find his speech pattern very off-putting.