Beer-braised short ribs

Pardon the posting hiatus. I’ve been otherwise occupied and distracted of late.

On Monday my CEO walked into my office and growled at me. He’d heard that I was feeling under the weather yet still came into work. As he had need of a healthy engineer in the office later in the week it was suggested that perhaps I ought to go home.

What’s a girl to do? Naturally I went home. Not one to let an opportunity go to waste I decided to use my time wisely by putting on some braised short ribs.

Unfortunately I only had a little under a pound of short ribs on hand, so the portion made was small. Small but potent.

In the style of any number of archaic cookbooks, the general method and ingredients:

Salt the ribs and brown in a dutch oven. Set them aside while you soften and brown a sliced onion. Add the ribs back in, throw in six or so small whole peeled garlic cloves, pour in most of a bottle of ESB, splash on some tamari soy sauce and worchestershire sauce and six or so shakes of Tobasco. Bring to a simmer then place in a 375° oven. After an hour or so drop the temperature to 325° Remove from the oven two hours later. Test for salt.

Man oh man oh man. Ooooooohhh, mama. Woogeda woogeda woogeda. These things were good. I mean really good. I mean Turn-a-Vegan-From-The-Dark-Side good. Yeah, that damn good. The entire dish was a deep dark glossy brown. The onions had all but melted into the sauce. The garlic as well. There was just enough Tobasco to goose your tastebuds but not in a way to cause them to press charges for harassment. Despite the many charms, were I to make them again there are still a couple of things I would do differently:

1. Do all the cooking at 325°, just for a longer total time
2. Make a whole helluva lot more of them

There ended up being only two servings, the last of which was greatly enjoyed today. Served over mafaldine (I’d have preferred fresh pappardelle but one must make do sometimes) with sauteed chard it was not only tasty but lovely as well.

Yeah, I’m gonna have to be sick a lot more often.