Short Ribs

(This post has lots of pictures of short ribs)











I love short ribs. I’ve served them at my last couple of dinner parties and my mom has been making them for me for years (She finally conceded yesterday that my short ribs are the best.) The only problem with short ribs is that they are an ugly cheap cut of meat. The cheap part isn’t a problem because short ribs are meant to be braised for hours and hours so they fall off the bone and melt when you bite into them. The ugly part is difficult for someone like me—a person with no culinary training who likes to try to make food look good.

For those of you who don’t know how to prepare short ribs, they’re easy. Here’s a quick briefing:

Season short ribs with salt and pepper and brown on both sides in a heavy stock pot

Sauté vegetables, I use celery carrots onions and garlic in the juices of the short ribs

Add fluids for braising. These will largely determine the nuances in the flavor of the short ribs. I use red wine, balsamic vinegar, and a stock I made from marrow bones and pig’s feet (any stock will do as long as it’s not cheap and bad)

Add other spices and aromatics and anything else you want. I use rosemary thyme and plum tomatoes

Add the seared short ribs

Bring the pot to a boil and place in a 250-300 degree oven and forget about the ribs for 4-8 hours. They will come out tasting fantastic.

As for serving short ribs…They are fairly unsightly pieces of meat. They taste great but are really not nearly as nice to look at as say, a charred steak. I’ve served short ribs on a plate over risotto with its own braising liquids and what I got was a big unshapely piece of brown meat surrounded by a brown viscous liquid. Not the aesthetic I was looking for.

The next time I served short ribs at a party they were over a puree of basil peas and potatoes but looked weird again. Something about the colors brown and green didn’t quite click (I probably should've had that one figured out ahead of time.)

Which brings me to my reason for posting today—I think I’ve finally found a way to serve short ribs so that they look AND taste good.

Here are short ribs with a beet potato puree, roasted carrots, chive flowers, pink beauty radishes, icicle radishes, pea greens and purple (I don’t remember the vegetable) greens.



I also recently received the suggestion to serve the short ribs in a bowl surrounded by their juices and whatever else I might add, (it’s a shame to waste the juices) one that I’ll have to try out some time. Just another excuse to eat delicious short ribs.