Culinary Disasters

Beef ribs oh how I love you.  Tender and juicy and once again underappreciated and undervalued.  Once cooked properly the meat is fork tender and has such beautiful taste and texture.

How could you expand on the joy that is beef ribs well by adding miso of course.  Miso for those who don’t know is a paste made from fermented soybean, rice, and water.  The most common usage for it is in miso soup but it has many many other uses.  If your town is as culturaly diverse as mine (read sarcasm) then it means a trip to the only Asian market and a quick glance in the cooler section will show you multiple different varities.  I decided red miso or aka miso should be used for this dish. 

Aka miso is fermented for about 1 year which produces the darker color and is more salty than white miso. 

Enough rambling and on to the dish.

For this dish you are going to need:

• About 4 beef short ribs
• 1 cup saki
• 2 cups of chicken stock
• 1/2 cup of aka/red miso
• 1 onion medium dice
• 1 stalk of celery medium dice
• 1 carrot medium dice
• 1 colored pepper medium diced (I used yellow)
• 3 cloves of garlic finely diced
• 2 sprigs of thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tb of cornstarch dissolved in 2 tb of water (called a slurry)
• TB of canola oil
• 2 TB of unsalted butter
• Kosher salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.  Over medium-high heat in a large pan melt 1 TB of the butter with the canola oil.  Salt and pepper the ribs.  Add the beef ribs to the pan and brown on all sides.  Remember if the pan is crowded do this in batches so the ribs get a good browning not a good steaming.

Once the ribs have been browned remove them from the pan and set aside.  Dump out all but 1 TB of the fat in the pan and add in the onion, celery, carrot, and bell pepper mixture and cook till softened (about 8 minutes) with a pinch of salt and pepper.  Add in the garlic and cook for another minute.

Add in the cup of saki and stir to free up any stuck bits on the bottom of the pan.  Let the saki reduce by 1/2.

Add in the miso and use a wisk to dissolve it into the mixture.

Add back in the ribs along with the stock, bay leaves, and thyme.  Bring the mixture to a boil and place in the oven covered. 

 Let it sit for a 1.5 hours.  After and 1.5 hours flip the meat and let it cook for another hour.  After 2.5 hours check the meat and it should be falling apart from the bone.  If it is not then place it back in the oven and check it every 15 minutes till done.

Once the meat is done remove it from the oven and let the meat rest on a plate.  I like to trim up any large packets of fat and remove them.

Strain the liquid and vegetables into a smaller saucepan and discard the solids. 

Place the saucepan back over medium heat and bring to a boil.  Let it reduce by 1/3.

Once reduced wisk in the slurry mixture.  Bring the mixture back up to a boil and shut off the heat.

Taste the sauce and adjust with salt and pepper.  If you want to feel free to add in the remaining TB of butter to add more richness.

Serve and enjoy!

Tags: beef //