Over the last couple of months I have been finding more the charm of recipes that take a lot of hours to make. That means it is like a day project, but most importantly....Letting it cook for a certain amount of hours means that it has more time to let the flavour sink in.
Especially on rainy days or days with a hangover...why not make something nice and have the feeling you have accomplished something. Treat yourself with a decent reward?
This week it was time to make the delicious ragu from pulled Shortribs. You know...ribs from the cow and not from the pig. With the meat coming from the farm butcher over here. So it was fresh and from close and fed with love. That is the start on how the rest of the dish also should be right?
These are the shortribs that went in entirely. As preparation I pulled the white layer from the ribs by hand (this is called the fascia) because then there is more surface for the sauce to soak in over the hours versus on this chewy white layer.
The other ingredients
Now the main recipe I based this dish on is this one but actually I just read a couple of recipes and took a bit of everything from there and also gave it a bit of swing from myself
- The shortribs
- A piece of pancetta diced
- Cellery 2 sticks
- 4 cloves of garlic (or 5 or 6..you just can't have too much)
- 1 big onion
- A winter carrot ( I don't know how you call them, but we call the big ones this)
- A couple of branches of thyme
- Tomato paste
- Peeled tomato
- 1 Laurel leaf ( is that called bay leaf?)
- Fresh oregano because it is awesome
- A branch of rosemary
- 1 Lemon for juice and zest
- A clunk of red wine
It all starts with baking the pancette (or guanciale also works just fine) which is a sort of think piece of bacon just in the pan. With the grease and fat which you bake out of the pork meat, that is what you use to bake the short ribs in.
Here we go: bake the pancetta pieces in the pan and take them out once there is enough fluid. Bake the short ribs on all sides in the pancetta fat and also take them out again.
Then you toss in the onion and cook until light brown. Add on the cellery and the carrot and also cook these with the rest on low heat about 10 minutes. At last you add on the garlic just for a minute so it doesn't burn. This mixture is called Soffrito.
Then add a scoop of tomato paste which is strong of taste and then add a decent amount of red wine in there as well. Let that simmer for about 10 minutes so the alcohol evaporates.
Packaging the herbs
I made a little pack of the thyme, the rosemary, the bay leaves and some parsley as well and binded it all together with a string.
Now small disclaimer if you want to ake this yourself: Take a bigger and stronger string, because mine didn't hold so well with all the simmering for hours.
So you have your soffrito mix with red wine going on and now you can add the peeled tomatoes and the little herb package and also add beef stock for the volume in there.
And in all of that: That is where you place your short ribs again, lower the heat and let it sit for a minimum of three hours.
When you see and feel the meat coming loose from bone then you can take it out to pull it for the pulled meat with two forks. This should go easy and otherwise it needs more time.
In the mean time you also take off the lid of the pan to reduce the sauce. That means the water evaporates and the sauce gets thicker. The pulled meat you toss back into the pan adding even more flavor.
Don't forget to take out your herbs package! (And that is the nice part with the package if the string doesn't break. Then it is super easy to catch and take out again)
I cooked a a thick rigatoni pasta in there as well because that one also absorbes the flavour a lot.
So this pasta took around 4 hours everything in total. Is that worth it?
I totally think so if you like the process of cooking, but I guess others might think different about this.
But the best thing about this dish? It was a lot of food and the day afterwards it tasted even better. This is an awesome multiday dish!