The TH Food Lab: Sunday Dinner, Slow, in Cast Iron
In which ya boi uses his brand new dutch oven for its intended purpose
There are meals that you cook on a weeknight after a long day at work or around the house watching children. Those meals are fine. They can be delicious and even have the veneer of fine panache. Thank you, Rachel Ray, for elevating the 30-minute meal. However, Sunday dinner is different. One of the better things to come out of a Christian-dominated culture is the importance placed on The Lord’s Day, specifically the meal served at the end of it. Whether you look at Sunday as the end of a weekend or the beginning of a week, it’s the still the perfect time to have a sumptuous dinner that takes a little extra time and a little extra effort to prepare. Roasted chicken, lasagna, pork shoulder, various soups, pot roast, all these things have the extra flair to them because they take so long to produce and oftentimes are richer and bolder in flavor than what you get on a weeknight. Rich, bold flavors cooked slowly? That sounds like a perfect excuse to braise something.
I recently purchased a dutch oven, because everyone should have a dutch oven just like they should have a cast iron pan and several pots and a reliably sharp, high-quality knife. Dutch ovens are versatile vessels that can stand up to the high heat needed to braise tough, fatty pieces of meat. Obviously, I’m not braising something every day, but these bad boys have other great uses too. You can also braise literally anything you want to get that rich, unctuous flavor with a piece of meat that melts (read the next phrase in your mind like Mike Myers in the “Coffee Talk” sketch) like buttah. Pork shanks, lamb chops, roasts, chicken pieces, even more vegetal options work with a low, slow bath in the oven. However, there’s one cut of meat that my mind goes to when I think about braising…
Beef short ribs.
The short rib checks all the boxes for braising. They’re fatty. They’re tough. They’re attached to a bone that releases that good marrow into the braising liquid when heated up. You can go to a fancy restaurant and get one or two of them on a plate for $25 or more. Beef already is at a premium at most places compared to chicken, but short ribs get closer to the steak treatment than a burger or pot roast. I paid less than that for three ribs that I had the butcher cut up into braise-ready chunks. Yeah, it’s not price-efficient for a family for everyday cooking, but Sunday dinner should be special, right? Right.
There are three core elements to any good braise – sear, deglaze, simmer. You first want to sear or brown the piece of meat on all sides. Then you deglaze the dutch oven with a liquid that will get the tasty brown bits off the bottom. Then you simmer that hunk of meat for however long it takes in the oven to fall off the dang bone. Short ribs generally do not braise in whole pieces. I got mine cut into two-inch (or so) diameter chunks, bone-in of course, at the butcher shop. I’m not sure what supermarkets you shop at, but even if they do have short rib, make sure they have a hands-on butcher department who can get them cut for you.
As fatty as short ribs are, you don’t want to sear them using the heat alone from the stove. Dutch ovens are not like seasoned cast iron pans in that regard. You will need starter fat. I used olive oil and browned each chunk on all sides. I then removed them from the oil and added in some mirepoix (celery, onion, carrot) I chopped up earlier. Once the onions started getting translucent, it was time for step two – deglaze. There are many different liquids one can use for this process, but red wine is a favorite for two reasons. One, it’s acidic so it will work with the heat to get those bits up easily. Two, red wine pairs well with beef, and a red wine sauce/gravy that results from a braise tastes just heavenly. I picked up a bottle of cabernet sauvignon at the grocery store. You don’t want to cheap out and get fortified wine or pruno, but I also wouldn’t be spending scads and scads of dollars on the best dry red from your local snooty wine cellar. Cook with the stuff you’d want to drink, sure, but you don’t have to consult your local steakhouse sommelier. Be smart.
I dropped in a third of the bottle, in this case, Woodbridge cab-sauv, and also a half-a-can of tomato paste. After the liquid reduced to the point where the chopped veggies stuck out like jagged crags off the shore of Flavortown, I added a cup or so of beef stock and the rest of the aromatic seasoning, which included five or six or seven smashed garlic cloves, a bay leaf, and a few shakes of the dried parsley bottle. You can use fresh parsley, but every time I had bought fresh herbs since moving into my apartment, half the bag has gone to waste. Fresh or dried is immaterial as long as you use them. It also bears mentioning that you should be seasoning with salt and pepper any time you add something to the pot. Salt and pepper the beef chunks. Season the mirepoix. Dirty up the wine. Taste the mix and see if you need any more before you pop it into the oven. Seasoning is flavor, and it’s insane that this has to be said, but I mean, y’all have eaten enough bland food to know you gotta beware, right?
After everything settled, I popped the lid on the dutch oven and put it into my oven which I preheated to 350 degrees F. Then? It was time to relax. Granted, I didn’t get the time I got when I was smoking a pork shoulder. Braising is low and slow, but it’s not as low and slow as barbecue is. Still, two hours was enough time to sit on the couch and catch up on some light reading. After the time was right, I pulled the beef from the oven. I always preach temperature over time, but it’s hard to do with a dutch oven. I’m not sure temperature probes are built for that iron crucible. If you want to go by temp and keep that 165-degree F goal, you’ll have to periodically check with heat-safe PPE. Overshooting by a few degrees on a braise won’t hurt you, but nailing that temp means more luxurious beef, so do what you must. I measured around 200 degrees F when I pulled my pot. The beef still came out like buttah even if I thought it could’ve been a little better. Braising is forgiving.
The gravy is the last real hurdle if you choose to process it further. Some people like to strain and serve. Some strain and maybe drop a few pads of butter in there, as if the gravy needs more fat (you can never have enough fat, he said ignorant to advice of cardiologists everywhere). I like it as is. The chunks of vegetables just add to the layers of flavor.
The next question on your mind should be “What do you serve with such a sumptuous protein?” The default answer should be “mashed potatoes.” I love mashed potatoes; don’t get it twisted. However, I wanted to try something a little more refined, a little more delicate. I thought, “hey, why not try some parsnips?” If you’ve never had parsnips or only associate them with the depression because of the old-timey Strong Bad cartoons on Homestarrunner Dot Com, you’re missing out. Raw, they have a lovely, slightly sweet fragrance that makes processing them a delight. Cooked, they have similar starchy consistency without being as thick or heavy as the potato. They’re made almost exactly the same way as well. Peel them, boil them in a brine bath, drain, add butter, seasoning, and dairy, and mash. The difference is you’re going to want to use mechanical blending rather than regular mashing either by hand or potato whisk. I used my immersion blender, mainly because it was the only blender I had on hand. I seasoned the parsnips more like a sweet potato than a regular one because of that inherent sweetness, so there was nutmeg in with the salt and pepper. I’d have added cinnamon too if I had any in my pantry. Curse my overlooking of cinnamon! CURSE IT!
As for the vegetable, I went with a standby. If you go back to my spatchcock chicken entry, you’ll see I linked to a Jacques Pepin recipe for brussels sprouts en fricassee, which I made again. Again, you do not need to be intimidated by the sprout. They’ve been genetically engineered to taste better over the years, and even if they were still bitter like they were when I was a child, you can temper that with things like “bacon grease” and “lemon juice” and “cooking them in ways other than boiling or steaming.” The sprout rules.
Overall, even though I was only cooking for myself, it felt like a Sunday dinner. The plate was complete. It was comforting. It was satisfying. I felt like I was sitting down with my family as a kid and eating something special. Sometimes, whether you’re with family or by yourself, you need to eat something that makes you feel warm inside (and not just because it has pepper in it that breaks the Scoville Scale either). Take the time to braise a fatty piece of meat on a Sunday. It’s not an everyday food, but Sundays don’t happen every day, do they?