As fall descends upon us, we enter the time of year that’s primed for a comforting dish — and the farm’s NE plus is ultra-short rib.
To find inspiration for the perfect short rib technique, chef Will Murray looked at how Daniel Bold made his red wine braised beef, and for one of his recent instructional videos, he took a deep dive into how to make this dish at home. And while short ribs aren’t the most premium cut on cattle, with proper technique they can be raised to Michelin star level.
Murray sponsored Fellows in London with fellow chef Jack Croft at a Michelin two-star dinner hosted by Heston Blumenthal. “Jake and I committed to finding ways to use kitchen by-products, which we turned into staff meals and snacks,” Murray told Luxury London. “The biggest lesson I learned was to always look for ways to innovate, even with humble ingredients.” From there, the pair began creating pop-ups featuring their nose-to-tail style of cooking, and after developing a following, they turned their kitchen into an open-source hub for culinary techniques, filming easy-to-follow guides to cooking at home like a pro chef.
The recipe begins with taking red wine and diluting it yourself. Some recipes will have you wait until later in the cooking process to add the wine and let it reduce with the rest of the braising liquid, but this method changes that. Murray’s method will concentrate the flavor, add some extra sweetness to the dish, and give you more control over how much the wine reduces itself. When it comes to sourcing your beef, see if you can get your butcher to cut the ribs into manageable pieces, but opt to leave the bone on, as it will add more flavor and body to the sauce as it cooks. And while there’s a healthy margin of error when it comes to braising beef, an important tip Murray shares is that you need to make sure you don’t let the vegetables burn while roasting. If you do, that acid flavor will contaminate the entire sauce—and if it does, there’s no going back. But if you brown the meat to add flavor, cook the mirepoux properly, and use high-quality beef stock, you’re pretty much set with this recipe. All you need then is patience to let them cook slowly in the oven until the meat is tender, but not completely falling apart.
And if you enjoy this short rib recipe and want to go for a braised beef with a slightly lighter flavor profile, try this short rib ragout Genovese from the husband-wife duo behind the hit New York restaurants Don Angie and San Sabino. It’s a great dish that’s as disgusting as the short rib in the video below, but swap out the red wine for white wine, copious amounts of caramelized onions, and you’ll have a completely different take on braised beef.
The authors
Jeremy Ripench
