Valentine's Day Beast Feast recap: Oven braised oxtail, mashed cauliflower, eggplant "ricotta" stackers
I came across a recipe I really wanted to try on nomnompaleo, the Slow Cooker Korean Shortribs. Let me just be very clear - this recipe is amazing. It's easy, and it makes your house smell so damn good you'll want to drown yourself in the smell. Make it. I'm going to include my variation here because I don't have a slow cooker and had to make a few modifications.
I tend to read comments obsessively because I never quite have the right ingredients on hand, and the comments will usually yield several workable substitutions. They served me very well this time.
I went to the fancy grocery store near me, where they had sold out of all their bone-in short ribs. When using a "wet" cooking method, like slow cooking or braising, use a bone-in meat if possible - the liquid pulls the marrow out of the bones and helps make a wonderfully flavorful sauce. There's some mythbusting that confirms that bone-in makes a difference for wet cooking methods, but little difference in grilling. They did, however, have heart-shaped center cut medallions (which I did not buy, but they were funny) and OXTAIL.
Oxtail is the primary meat used in a lot of Asian soups, including pho broth. I know it can be delicious from other people cooking it, but I'd never made it myself. I was totally intrigued. Turns out it's cheaper than English-style short ribs, and more consistently tender. I'm pretty much sold on it.
I halved the Nom Nom Paleo recipe and used about 3.5 pounds of oxtail (saving the bones to make broth, first attempt ever - post on that to follow later). I forgot to halve the sauce and made the entire batch, which was fine since I used oven braising instead of slow cooking and I think more evaporates in the oven.
I'm not totally paleo yet, especially since I still have half-bottles of soy sauce and whatnot to use up, and I don't have gluten allergies. I used soy sauce instead of coconut aminos - definitely should have used less soy sauce, since it is stronger tasting than coconut aminos. 1/3 cup probably would have been fine.
I also used apple cider vinegar instead of coconut vinegar, and left off the cilantro completely because I was lazy.
For cooking this in the oven, I used a Dutch oven pot at 275 degrees for 6 hours. I broiled them on both sides (in the Dutch oven, because who wants to clean another baking sheet) before pouring in the sauce. Even if you cook less meat, you probably don't want to lower the cooking time, since it takes a while for the meat to break down (is that the right term?) and become tender. It turned out perfectly. 6 hours, 275 degrees, 3.5 pounds of oxtail. Remember that. I did check on it a couple of times to make sure there was enough liquid, but I didn't need to add anything extra.
Here's Andrew scooping it out of the Dutch oven:
For an appetizer and side, I made the eggplant "ricotta" stacks and mashed garlic cauliflower, also from the Nom Nom Paleo cookbook and didn't change a thing. They were both amazing, very easy, and pretty to look at. I sort of love the macadamia nut ricotta. It doesn't taste like cheese, per se, but it's sort of salty and I love the flavor of macadamia nut, so I'll take any excuse to eat it.
Go forth, friendbeasts. Make these super easy dishes and let your mouth be happy.
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