Agree, we rarely use beef tail to prepare our dishes, and there are those who have never cooked it or even tried it. But in vain! I will show you several recipes on how to cook beef tail deliciously and on a budget. The meat will turn out so tender and soft, the broth will be aromatic and satisfying, that you will definitely want to cook it again.
Total cooking time - 5 hours 0 minutes
Active cooking time - 1 hour 10 minutes
Cost - very economical
Calorie content per 100 g - 102 kcal
Number of servings - 6 servings
How to cook beef tail: recipes
Ingredients:
Tail - 1 pc. (beef)
Potatoes - 2 pcs.
Carrots - 2 pcs.
Onions - 3 pcs.
Sweet red pepper- 2 pcs.
Green beans— 100 g
Tomato - 5 pcs.
Fat - 2 tbsp.
Salt - to taste
Lemon zest - 1 tsp.
Oregano – 5 g dried
Dried basil - 5 g
Black pepper - to taste
Thyme – 1 sprig(s)
Bay leaf - 2 pcs.
Allspice - 3 pcs.
Greens – 15 g
Preparation:
Beef tails are different: their size can vary in weight within 1-2 kilograms, tails taken from an adult animal or a young calf. All this, naturally, affects the time and technology of preparing the dish, as well as its taste.
The thick part of the tail can be stewed; there is enough meat for a hearty lunch or dinner. But from the thin part of the tail, where there is practically no meat, you can prepare a flavorful broth, and cook soup with this broth. So, today on the menu we have beef tail soup and stewed beef tail with vegetables.
I weighed my beef tail on the scale - 1400 g. This is a medium-sized tail. Quite fleshy, without excess fat, tail not too long.
It takes about 4-5 hours to prepare the tail, so I advise you not to rush, and not to miss important tips and notes on preparing the tail before stewing/cooking.
If you buy the tail at the market, then ask the butcher to chop it at the market; you can do this at home, but you will have to put in a lot of effort.
First, rinse your tail under running water. Next, use a sharp knife or ax to divide the tail into pieces, cutting along the joints. Be careful not to damage the bones if you use an axe. Strong and sharp blows can cause bone fragments to form and then they will get caught on the teeth in the finished dish, which will prevent you from fully enjoying the taste. If you still cannot avoid the formation of fragments, then try to get rid of them by rinsing under running water.
Fill a large saucepan with cold water and place the beef tail segments in it. You can add a little salt to the water. To make the meat white, not bloody and slightly firm to the touch, it is advisable to change the water in the pan 2-3 times. Let the meat sit in the water for 1-2 hours.
Select thin parts of the tail (about 500 g) for making soup. Place them in a saucepan and fill with 3 liters of cold water.
Place the pan on the fire, bring to a boil, add 1-2 bay leaves washed in water and 3-4 peppercorns (black or allspice), turn the heat to low, cover the pan with a lid and leave on the stove for about 2- 2.5 hours.
While the beef tail broth is boiling and cooking, you can prepare the vegetables for the soup. The set of products is quite simple, it will be vegetable soup. I didn’t add any rice, millet, lentils or beans here. The broth itself turns out to be very aromatic, and the vegetable composition of the soup only complements its taste. But if you think that a soup without cereals will be light and unrich, so be it, throw in a handful of rice.
Now let's prepare the vegetables. Wash and peel carrots (1 pc.) well. Remove the skin from the onion (1 piece). Cut both onions and carrots into half rings 3-4 mm thick.
Wash the sweet red pepper, remove the seeds, cut lengthwise into 2 parts. Cut each part lengthwise again and cut into strips 3-4 mm thick. Wash the green beans and cut into strips no longer than 4 cm. If you use frozen beans, like me, then you don’t need to do anything with them.
Half an hour before the broth is ready, add salt. Add salt to taste.
With such a long boil, there will be less water in the pan, but since we have plenty of vegetables, it is not necessary to add water.
Try fishing out one part of the tail and placing it on a plate. If the meat easily comes away from the bone, then the broth is ready and you can throw in the vegetables.
The first will be potatoes (2 pcs.). It should be peeled and cut into medium cubes.
After boiling for 10 minutes, add the remaining vegetables - carrots, green beans, onions and red bell peppers. I don’t add any special spices or seasonings so as not to drown out the aroma of the beef broth. Just a pinch of black pepper wouldn't be out of place. All. Let the vegetables simmer for 10-15 minutes.
The last stage of cooking the soup will be adding the greens. Dill and parsley are great. Finely chop the greens with a knife, place them in the pan, cover with a lid, boil for 2 minutes and you can turn off the heat. Let the soup sit on the stove for a while to allow all the flavors to develop.
Serve with fresh bread, pita bread or grilled baguette.
As soon as you have started cooking the soup, you can simultaneously start preparing the stewed tail.
To do this, you need to fry large meaty pieces in a frying pan with 2 tablespoons of animal fat (you can use any fat: chicken, pork, beef). If you don’t have animal fat, then use vegetable oil - 3 tablespoons will be enough. When a golden brown crust appears on the meat, it can be transferred to a pan (preferably large and with thick walls) for stewing.
Pour a glass of hot boiled water into the frying pan in which the pieces of beef tail were fried and pour this oily water over the tails in the pan. Add more water so that all pieces of the tail are immersed in it. Place the pan on the fire, bring to a boil, reduce the flame to minimum, cover with a lid and simmer for 2.5-3 hours. Check the water in the pan from time to time. If necessary, pour in more. In addition, it is necessary to turn the tail pieces in the pan so that they cook evenly.
During these 2.5 hours, you can prepare the vegetables: peel, chop, blanch.
Cut peeled carrots (1 piece, large) into strips 4 cm long. Cut peeled onions (2 pieces) into half rings, not too thin.
Remove the seeds from the red sweet pepper, cut lengthwise into 2 parts and cut into strips.
On 4-5 fleshy tomatoes, make cross-shaped cuts near the stem attachment and on the opposite side. Dip the tomatoes in boiling water for 10-15 seconds, carefully remove and peel off the skins with a knife. Cut each tomato into 4 parts.
After the time allotted for stewing the tail, you need to add vegetables.
Transfer all the vegetables to the meat, add salt, pepper, lemon zest, dried basil and oregano, stir, add more water, cover and simmer for 25 minutes.
The result is very aromatic and tender meat stewed in vegetable sauce. Thanks to prolonged simmering over low heat, the meat easily comes off the bone, and the gravy is sweet and aromatic. To highlight the beauty of stewed beef tails, sprinkle the dish with fresh thyme.
Side dishes can include boiled potatoes, rice or buckwheat porridge, pasta and fresh or stewed vegetables.
Bon appetit!
See also:
Florentine tripe
Beshbarmak with testes
To begin with, let's try to answer the question: what can be exquisite in offal, which, of course, includes beef tails? Well, it largely depends on how and with what you cook them. But those who have had the opportunity to try this, I’m not afraid of this word, delicacy, will not let you lie: the meat on the tails is tender, literally melting in the mouth, thanks to the high content of joint gelatin. There are only two "buts" in the idea of beef tails. The first is where to get them. And secondly, how to actually use them in finished form.
With the first, everything is simple if this by-product does not end up on collective farm markets. Farm products delivered to your home is now a very common and affordable service that easily solves the problem of tailings. As for the second “but”, only aristocrats will have to give up “tail delights”: here it is difficult to get by with a knife and fork because of the bones. Therefore, when tasting this dish, you will have to partially help yourself with your hands, holding wet wipes under the same hands. But these “inconveniences” are almost nothing compared to the vivid sensations of color and taste that the “sacred plant” of celery, tomatoes and a bit of pureed orange impart to the tails. Shall we try? Then let's get to work. For a couple of kilograms of beef tails (this is 2-3 full servings), take:
1. 50-70 grams of good lard (preferably lamb).
2. One medium celery root (300-400 grams)
3. Onion head
4 3-4 cloves garlic
5. Either 5-6 medium ripe tomatoes, from which the skin has been removed, or ready-made tomato puree - approximately 500 grams.
6. Medium orange.
7.50 grams of vegetable oil
8. A good pinch of freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste.
Rinse the tails well, cut off excess fat at the base and cut it along the joints (I do not recommend chopping it under any circumstances due to the inevitable appearance of small bones).
Set the tail pieces aside and cut the lard into arbitrary pieces for the cracklings. In general, it is always advisable to fry such things as offal in pure lard - it is much more appetizing and tastier. Chopped lard can be melted in a deep frying pan, kettle or wok. There should be enough space, taking into account the fact that later we will put not only tails and vegetables in the dish, but also pour in water.
As soon as the cracklings are thoroughly melted, you can remove them and start frying the tails themselves with the addition of a pinch or two of salt.
It is advisable to fry until lightly browned - this is the basis for the color both for the sauce and for the pieces themselves.
Following the onion is celery root, cut into thin strips with the addition of freshly ground black pepper - not so much for flavor, but for subsequent spiciness. The quality of cutting celery root in the future will largely determine not only the taste of the sauce, but also its consistency, since, given the duration of stewing beef tails, celery will play, among other things, the role of a thickener.
If fresh tomatoes are used, they will need to be peeled and finely chopped, placing the “slices” in a deep bowl and lightly salting them so that the juice is released abundantly - it will then need to be added to the tails along with the tomatoes. Tomatoes canned in their own juice or ready-made, pureed tomatoes, usually sold already in packages, are very good. The tomato part should be added to the tails after the celery has softened.
And again, you need to mix everything, ensuring that the stewing in the tomato juice occurs evenly, almost until the juice itself has completely evaporated. After which you should pour hot water into the bowl so that it only slightly covers the frying, and add chopped orange pulp randomly (to puree). It perfectly balances the acidity of tomatoes, adding its own notes to the taste of the future sauce.
Finally, the main stew is the longest process in preparing this delicacy. It should take place at a very low simmer for at least two to two and a half hours, during which from time to time you will not only have to stir the contents of the dish so that something does not burn, but also add hot water to maintain the required level of moisture in the sauce. And only at the final stage, when tasting the meat demonstrates its complete readiness, can the sauce be finally seasoned with salt and seasoned with freshly ground black pepper.
In some cases, fried rice is served with ready-made beef tails (in fact, it is dry fried in a small amount of oil, and brought to readiness with the help of water). But since this dish is not for princesses and you can forget about aristocratic manners for a while, the sauce is good when you dip toast in it. More specifically, toast tastes good when dipped in sauce.
From such an unpopular piece of carcass it seems like something incredible and difficult, but is it really so? Yes, there are some nuances here: this is one of the most mobile parts of the body, and accordingly, the meat here is very tough and sinewy. But still...
About the benefits of oxtail
The disadvantage of toughness is also an advantage: with prolonged heat treatment, the collagen contained here in large quantities dissolves and makes the meat incredibly tender and soft. In addition, it is very beneficial for bones, joints and connective tissues.
Oxtail meat has all the beneficial properties of beef, it contains a lot of iron, vitamins B, PP and E, while the tail is one of the most inexpensive. That is why oxtails, recipes for which are very popular in Spain, have always been considered a dish for the poor. But they didn’t become any less tasty.
Oxtail in Spanish. Photo, recipe and serving method for Rabo de Toro
This is a classic dish that is traditionally prepared from the tails of bulls defeated in bullfights. But you can cook it from ordinary store-bought meat, there is no difference in taste, only the general atmosphere plays a role.
To prepare oxtail in Spanish you will need:
3 kg tails;
2 medium onions;
5-6 large tomatoes;
2-3 carrots;
1 tbsp. leek;
Salt and pepper, garlic, thyme, bay leaf;
1 cup brandy;
2.5 cups red wine (dry);
Many novice cooks are immediately intimidated by the number of ingredients, but, except for alcohol, all of the above is almost always available in every kitchen. When buying oxtails, it is better to choose larger pieces: yes, there is not much meat there, but in the center of each piece there will be a large tubular bone, which is the basis of a tasty dish.
Cooking oxtail according to a Spanish recipe
First of all, you need to prepare the oxtails. The recipe for bullfighters says that they need to be chopped into pieces 2.5 cm thick; it is recommended to ask the butcher about this before purchasing. The prepared and washed tails are laid out on a baking sheet on top of foil and placed in a well-heated oven for 20 minutes.
While the tail gets rid of excess fat in the oven and acquires a pleasant golden hue, there is time to prepare the vegetables. Carrots and both types of onions are cut into large pieces and placed in heated oil in a saucepan or frying pan with a very thick bottom. Chopped garlic and all the spices are also added there. The vegetable mixture is cooked over medium heat for 10 minutes with regular stirring. After this time, it's time to add the tomatoes, chopped and peeled. The entire mixture reaches the desired state in another 10 minutes.
It's time to add lightly baked meat and alcohol to the vegetables. After boiling for 10 minutes, add water to cover the tails. Then comes the hardest part - the waiting. They are very tasty - oxtails; The recipe is budget and affordable, but bringing them to readiness within 4-4.5 hours makes you look at your watch every now and then.
The dish should not boil, the sauce should only tremble slightly, and the meat should simmer. Readiness will occur when the meat is melting tender and easily pulls away from the bone. When this happens, you can turn off the stove, let the meat brew for 20 minutes and serve.
Traditional serving of the finished dish
The classic Spanish serving comes down to the following: you need to remove pieces of meat and bay leaves from the finished dish, throw away the bones, and grind the entire sauce with a blender into a homogeneous mass. This option is possible, but a sauce with appetizing pieces of vegetables and a more pronounced texture looks much more impressive. Traditionally, the dish is served with fried or boiled potatoes or pasta.
Other interesting ways to prepare tails
Appetizing, healthy and rich in vitamins, oxtails, the recipe for which is found in many cuisines around the world, can be prepared not only as an addition to potatoes or pasta. They make excellent rich, sticky and aromatic broths, enriched with vitamins and collagen. What can you make from this broth? Oxtail soup, of course! You can create a recipe for it yourself by adjusting the quantity and variety of vegetables, adding your favorite spices and herbs, beans, peas, and experimenting with types of alcohol. We offer you one of the options.
How to cook oxtail soup: recipe with photo of a classic version of the dish
One of the most delicious options for preparing this rather unusual part of beef carcass is a classic German soup. Its basis is, as you understand, a bull's tail. The recipe with a photo and a detailed description of the process is presented below.
To prepare oxtail soup you will need the following ingredients:
1 kg oxtail;
100 g leeks;
1 PC. onions;
1 PC. carrots;
1 PC. parsley root;
100 g celery root;
300 g potatoes;
2 tbsp. l. flour;
100 ml of red wine, preferably Madeira;
Marjoram, saffron, rosemary, pepper, salt, basil;
Vegetable oil;
Egg white to clear the broth.
Cooking oxtail
You should start preparing the soup by preparing the main ingredient - oxtail. To do this, the cleaned and chopped tail must be scalded with boiling water, and then soaked in ice water for an hour.
Fry the well-soaked tail in hot oil, add carrots, onions, parsley and celery, fry the vegetables until golden brown. Transfer to a saucepan, add water and potatoes. The traditional German recipe calls for turnips, but if you don't have those, potatoes are a great substitute. Cook the soup on the stove for 3-4 hours over very low heat, it should barely boil.
In terms of taste, the soup can be considered almost ready, but the cloudy broth does not look very appetizing, and ordinary egg white will help to cope with this problem. To carry out the cleaning procedure, all vegetables and meat are removed from the broth, and beaten egg white is introduced into the boiling broth in a thin stream. After a minute, the curdled egg will take over the remaining foam and lighten the broth to a clear state. All that remains is to strain it through a fine sieve or layer of cloth.
The prepared clarified broth is returned to the stove to complete the cooking process. Next, add boiled wine to it and bring the mixture to a boil. Dissolve a tablespoon of flour in a glass of water and add it in a thin stream to the boiling broth. Then add the meat and vegetables cut into pieces, bring to a boil, sprinkle with herbs and serve.
Oxtail dishes are tasty, aromatic, rich and satisfying. If served correctly, they can become a real decoration for the holiday table, and a skilled housewife will have a queue of people waiting to receive the recipe.
Many years ago, when I was still much taller and more beautiful, my brother courted a young lady, who later became his wife for a short time. And in the process of courtship, the sweet girl was invited by him to her parents’ house, where we lived then. These times, frankly speaking, were not abundant, although, thanks to my father and his connections, we never had a shortage of food.
The visit turned out to be, as far as I remember now, spontaneous and the mother fed the guest what she had on the stove at that moment, without any preamble, serving stewed beef tails to the table. When the large plate of aromatic meat was empty, and my brother, the young lady and I went to our room, your correspondent happily began the interview:
- Irin, tell me, what did you eat just now?
- Meat.
- Well, yes, of course, meat. Which one? What animal? What part of the carcass?
- I don’t know! Meat and meat.
- Was the meat tasty?
- Yes.
- No, Ir, you didn’t just eat meat. You ate beef tails.
- Stop doing that! What other tails! I also found a fool for my pranks! There can't be any tails on the table in your family!
The future wife did not believe her future husband and brother-in-law, who at that moment were laughing loudly and loudly, but, apparently, she still had a bad feeling and this marriage ended up being short-lived.
It’s curious, but many of my fellow countrymen really have a prejudice against beef tail and will take it here only for jellied meat, or even just for dinner for the domestic dog. That’s why it’s cheap, and there’s no problem finding it in the meat aisles. Only, what a curious thing it turns out to be! How often in culinary history it was Cinderella who later turned out to be a real princess, and an expensive carriage could easily turn, on the contrary, into an ordinary pumpkin.
Who invented eating oysters? Most likely, poor people who did not have the opportunity to eat meat.
Who made the first hodgepodge and for what reason? Probably those peasants who had pickles lying around that no longer fit into their mouths in their usual form.
Who created pizza? To whom does bouillabaisse owe its birth?
These and similar questions can be multiplied, but the answer to them will be the same: many culinary masterpieces owe their birth to the limited, poor capabilities of the cook and his rich imagination.
It's the same story with tails. A well-cooked beef tail is not at all a cancer on the “fishless” meat market, which is better not to talk about out loud, but a separate culinary poem. It is no coincidence that dishes made from this meat are highly valued in many national cuisines. In Italy they love coda alla vaccinara, in Spain - rabo de toro, in Belgium - hospot soup and tails stewed in beer, in England - Londonderry, in Germany - ochsenschwanz. Beef tails can be found in Armenian khash and in South Africa, where they are willingly used for special dumplings; in Burma, the tails are smoked; in Korea, they are used to make the national soup Seollongtang; and in the Philippines, connoisseurs are treated to kare-kare - stewed beef tail in nut sauce. The fact is that the combination of meat and collagen-rich connective tissue in this part of the carcass is completely unique. Replace the tail in a dish, for example, with a shank that is similar in “spirit” and the dish itself will turn out to be different, in some cases much less interesting.
Of course, the tail is not suitable for regular frying in a frying pan, it is not suitable for grilling, and you cannot make an entrecote out of it. It takes time for connective tissues to become truly delicious. Therefore, the tail will show its strength to the eater during prolonged stewing or cooking. And in these technologies, which are advantageous in this case, the variations of excellent dishes are endless. Today I stew the tails to my own taste, combining European and Asian cooking.
So, first of all, we need the tail itself. The butcher gave me a wonderful pair for less than three hundred rubles - almost nothing.
First of all, of course, you need to somehow divide the tails into pieces. We could have asked the butcher for this, but if we got the whole tail, we would have to do this work ourselves.
Don’t even think about chopping the tails, you’ll just spoil them - you’ll be tortured picking out the bone fragments later. The flexible tail can be cut perfectly with a sharp knife if you correctly determine the location of the cut.
First, look closely at the tail. Do you see noticeable thickenings?
They are given by protrusions located at the end of bone links. If you move along the tail from its base to the thin part, then right after each such thickening there is a cartilaginous joint through which a knife can easily cut. If the thickenings are hard to see, help yourself with your hands, feel the bone, find a clearly protruding protrusion and cut right behind it.
The first five links of the tail usually go into a la carte restaurant dishes, but we won’t deprive ourselves, we’ll take everything.
In addition to meat, we will need some vegetables: onions, garlic, tomatoes, carrots, sweet peppers. And for the spicy side of things, juniper berries, black Chinese cardamom Tsaoko, a good piece of galangal, hot capsicum, purple cardamom, Hong Kong cardamom, long pepper, coriander and brown sugar are responsible. In addition to the above, let's prepare a couple of bunches of greens: basil and cilantro, take a bottle of dry wine and something sour, in our case it will be tamarind.
Apparently, not all of the spices mentioned are well known and available in our latitudes.
There should be no problems with, juniper grows in Russian open spaces.
, to a first approximation, you can replace it with the more familiar Nepalese one with the addition of additional cilantro and red pepper, however, I would highly recommend that spice lovers get acquainted with this wonderful variety at the first opportunity.
, along with the fashion for Thai cuisine, began to systematically appear in our stores and I definitely would not replace it with ginger.
, things for Chinese cuisine are ordinary, but for now, in our area, of course, they are exotic. When added, they perfectly expand the taste palette of the dish towards astringency and pleasant bitterness. I probably won’t recommend replacing them with some kind of thorn, but to neglect these ingredients altogether is everyone’s inalienable right.
carries with it, along with a peppery aroma, heavy notes that are quite appropriate in this case, but if you don’t have it, finally take black peppercorns, and instead of tamarind paste, lemon or lime will do.
In general, all the spices are selected in such a way as, on the one hand, to create a taste analogy of a powerful wild animal, and on the other hand, to maximally, but harmoniously, stretch the taste space presented to the consumer, therefore, if the cook repeats the dish, he will find his own ideas for promoting in the indicated directions, then, of course, they can only be welcomed.
So, if all the ingredients have been selected and the tails have been cut, then let’s proceed to the main process.
Pour a little vegetable oil into a suitable cauldron or wok and fry the tails thoroughly over high heat until brown.
When ready, add onion and garlic to them, fry again, add carrots, fry some more and add all the spices.
Since the dish is “long-lasting” and still has time to live on the stove, there’s no need to mince the spices: I’ll cut the galangal into large slices, I’ll just remove the useless skin from the Hong Kong cardamom, and I’ll cut off the tip of Tsaoko, like a cigar, and crush it a little more. Fans of the purity of the dish can tie everything up in a sachet, but I put the spices right there, finding additional pleasure in later biting into some aromatic grain that ended up in my portion.
Let's fry everything a little more together with spices (remembering that some flavors are exclusively fat-soluble), first add salt, acidify with tamarind and move on to the next stage - stewing. Now you need to lay the peeled tomatoes, pour in the wine,
Transfer everything, God forgive me, into the slow cooker, close the lid
and forget the cauldron on the lowest heat for five hours. About fifteen minutes before it’s ready, add the sweet peppers, finally adjust with salt, tamarind, sugar, pepper, and then turn off the heat completely and add the herbs.
Try it! And, if, after this, you do not give up the banal cut in favor of the tail, then, as the classic said, “I am your blood enemy for life.”
I also know a few recipes for oxtail soup, but I don’t like it too much.
I would be glad to try something new.
If anyone knows an interesting recipe, my gratitude will be limitless within reason...
A couple of preliminary notes. When purchasing a cut tail, you should pay attention to the fact that it should be cut at the junction of the vertebrae. In your opinion, excess fat can be removed, but do not be too zealous.The cooking technology is simple, it actually includes two stages: preparing vegetables (preliminary stewing in their own juice) and adding and subsequent long stewing (at least 2 hours) of pieces of tail in vegetable sauce.
A large, thick-walled saucepan is required!
Argentinian oxtail recipe
Ingredients: 750 gr. oxtails, 3 tbsp fat, 3-4 coarsely chopped onions, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 carrot, 1 bay leaf, 3 pcs. cloves, 1 incomplete tsp. dried thyme, 1/4 l red wine, pepper, salt, 1 tsp. sugar, 1 lemon, 1 tbsp. flour.
Cut the tails into pieces and fry heavily in 2 tbsp. spoons of fat. Add finely chopped onions and garlic, grated carrots, bay leaves, cloves, thyme and salt. Simmer the meat over low heat, adding water from time to time. Season with salt and pepper, burnt sugar, lemon juice and zest. Continue simmering for another 10 minutes. Pass the sauce through a sieve.
Prepare dark gravy from the remaining fat and flour. Mix it with the juice released during stewing and red wine. Place the tail pieces into the prepared gravy and lightly boil again.
The dish can be served with boiled rice or potatoes.
Recipe from I. Lazerson from the book DISHES FROM BY-PRODUCTS
vkusninka.com
It is so established by nature that different cuts of meat are best suited for different dishes. Some things should be boiled, some things should definitely be fried, and some things reveal their flavor during slow, leisurely simmering. Ox (or beef) tail is a product that can scare away particularly impressionable eaters, but after trying the tender meat that literally melts in your mouth, you will realize that you have almost deprived yourself of a pleasure that you did not even suspect. One of the advantages of this dish is that the tail is one of the cheapest cuts, and there is enough meat for everyone.
Braised beef tail
4 servings
1 beef tail (800-1000 g)
1 stalk of celery
1 carrot
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
2 cloves
4 black peppercorns
800 g tomatoes in their own juice
olive oil
a couple of thyme sprigs
salt
pepper
When buying a tail, ask the butcher to cut it into segments about 5 cm long. Place the meat in a pan, pour boiling water over it and cover with a lid. After 10 minutes, drain the water and return the meat to the pan along with coarsely chopped celery, carrots and onions (stick a clove in the last couple), 2 cloves of garlic, bay leaf and black pepper. Shake the pan, fill with cold water so that it just covers the food, and cook over low heat for 2.5-3 hours, periodically removing the foam. After straining, discard the broth - it will come in handy! – and remove the meat from the bones. This will be very easy to do.
Heat a little olive oil in a large saucepan, quickly fry 2 chopped garlic cloves in it, add the tomatoes in their own juice, peeled and chopped, and pieces of meat. Add thyme leaves, season lightly with ground black pepper, and simmer for another 1.5-2 hours over low heat, adding a little water if the sauce thickens completely. At the end of cooking, taste the meat - it should be very soft and tender, otherwise you need to simmer longer - season with salt and black pepper and remove the saucepan from the heat. Oxtail ragu can be served with any of the usual side dishes, or can be used as a sauce for pasta or gnocchi. This is exactly what I will do in the recipe that will follow immediately after this one.
Oxtail "Cookbook of Spain"
A series of recipes for Spanish cuisine "Cookbook of Spain" more details:
"The oxtail does not tolerate fuss"
Umberto Rocca ("The Stork") on oxtails
When is a bull's tail cut off?
Of course, they cut it off from the carcass when it is taken apart. The tails arrive to us chilled and already without skin. Moreover, these are not the entire tails, but their front part, which is closest to the body.
Do you get oxtails from Europe?
We cook with local beef. Yes, no extra effort is needed here. Oxtails are not elegant, but simply hearty and delicious food. In the classic version, meat from oxtails is eaten with hands, gnawing the meat from the bones. In Italy they are prepared in almost every restaurant, and in Spain they even use the tails of bulls killed in bullfights, the dish is called rabo di toro, this is also a classic. In our restaurant, the meat is removed from the bone, and the tails are served with a special red sauce with spinach. This is not exactly a dish for the poor, but it is very affordable and is considered popular in Mediterranean countries. Although it takes a very long time to cook.
How much meat is on the tail and what are its properties?
Once they sent me the tails of young calves - I had to send them away. It turned out that it is unprofitable to cook - and precisely because there is only 30 percent meat in the oxtail. The rest is good tubular bone, nerves and tendons. Imagine how many veal tails would have to be prepared for a hungry adult... The meat has all the properties of beef: it has iron and is good for the blood, and the sticky broth made from meat on the bone is good for the body. The main benefit is that you ate something tasty - and that makes you happy!
Do I need to marinate oxtails?
But of course! I mentioned that while it's affordable, oxtails require a lot of time. But first, some good advice: in order to eat properly, you need to prepare a very large pan, and buy about five kilograms of meat. Cut the tails into eight-centimeter slices and throw them into running cold water - and you can forget about them for a day. Water will finally clean the surfaces of the meat and free it from blood, the pieces will become denser. Then we take them out of the water and fill them with red wine. You will need a lot of wine - but during these 12 hours it will absorb all harmful substances, give the meat tartness and sourness, and also a lilac tint. Then add salt and pepper and put the tails in the oven at 250 degrees for 10 minutes and bake to highlight the taste of the meat. At the same time, throw vegetables into a pan of water in a ratio of one to two parts of meat - in our case, 2.5 kilograms: carrots, onions, celery stalks. And here are the spices: thyme, cloves, bay leaf, juniper, a little olive oil. Carrots and onions add sweetness to the broth. When the vegetables are already half ready, throw the meat into the broth and prepare to skim the foam several times. When the water has evaporated greatly, add more red wine. In total, for 5 kilograms of meat, you will need two liters of wine and six liters of water. And the meat itself should be cooked for at least five hours. Then we take out the meat, remove it from the bone with our hands and tear the meat into fibers.
Shall we use broth?
Necessarily. Now, let’s get on with it while the meat, removed from the bone and separated into fibers, cools. Over low heat, adjust the taste of the meat broth with vegetables using salt and pepper. You can’t add too much salt at once - the sauce will thicken, and if you add too much salt, that’s the end of it. That’s why we always add a pinch of salt. We take out the spices that we can notice in the cloudy and very rich broth. Gently wipe the remaining contents. And evaporate a little more. Now let's add some dark chocolate...
Do you put chocolate in a sauce based on broth and vegetables?!
And who said that this cannot be done? Let's put a little, 30 grams per kilogram of sauce. Actually, the version of the sauce “with chocolate” is classic Spanish, and without chocolate is Italian. Nothing spicy, it has a sweet and sour, complex taste, and the shades that the wine gave it are very calm and to the point. I would never imagine any kind of mustard on oxtail cutlets. Red sauce only, with or without chocolate...
What do we do with the meat removed from the tail?
After cooling the fibers, we form them into patties the size of an egg. If the meat is not sticky enough, roll the cutlet in egg and flour. And then deep fry for a few seconds until the flour is browned. We serve this dish like this: in the center of the plate we place spinach, steamed with butter, next to it are three meat balls, as if we glaze them with our red sauce, and on top of the spinach we put some mashed potatoes and pickled peppers.
In general, having tried it once in Spain, it became clear that this is a very suitable dish.
I’m not writing a recipe, there are plenty of them on the internet (stewed oxtail), choose according to your taste.
For garnish - potatoes fried in a cauldron on the fat tail with onions and carrots.
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