Chinese Braised Oxtail in your Pressure Cooker or Slow Cooker

If you enjoy Chinese or Asian style cuisine you will love this dish. Oxtail is a cut of meat which appeared quite regularly as a stew at the dinner table when I was growing up, however it is absolutely transformed here with this remarkable combination of flavours. It is finger lickin' good. I often need to follow a recipe when using Asian ingredients, as it can be a fine line between getting it right or messing it up completely and the result being quite ordinary. I am much more confident with creating an original recipe for Italian, French or even Middle Eastern food than any kind of Asian cuisine. Perhaps that is also why so many people still use complete pastes and sauces from a bottle if they feel like an Asian meal. However there is no need as this easy combination gives a perfect result.

It was out with the old and in with the new on the weekend, and thankfully that didn't include me I write whilst laughing, as it was my birthday. Not a significant birthday, however as we get older I think they all become quite significant. Now I am just very thankful that I am still alive to enjoy each new birthday, as there is still so much to do.  So for my birthday gift, Mr. HRK brought home a brand new All-in-One Slow Cooker and Pressure Cooker Electronic Pot. Consequently my red 80's vintage Slow Cooker and also vintage Pressure Cooker retired to a better life at the recycling depot. They both have been just chugging along for quite a while now.  I found it a little difficult to part with these items that have moved with us from kitchen to kitchen for a large part of our married lives,  but we have a good rule that when something new such as an appliance or piece of furniture enters the house, something must also  leave the house. What is gone is gone. It works most times. This time one new item replaced two.

So we were both very excited about our new cooking machine. This is the first dish we have cooked in it, besides the apple cake, which came out of the accompanying Phillips  recipe book and has just been refined a little by us.We pressure cooked the meat and braise as it was a very hot day and the modern Pressure Cooker is the most efficient and coolest way of cooking this type of meal.  However slow cooking would work just as well. This is the kind of dish where you eat what you can with your knife and fork and then you just have to pick the bones up in your fingers and eat every last little morsel that you can find. It's a keeper.

Chinese Braised Oxtail

Ingredients:
1 kg beef oxtail, trimmed
1/2 cup (125ml) Japanese or Korean soy sauce
1/4 cup Chinese cooking wine
1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
6 cloves garlic, bruised
12cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thickly
4 green onions, chopped coarsely
2 star anise
2 cinnamon sticks
3 x 5cm strips orange rind
1/2 cup water
2 green or spring onions, shredded finely for garnish

Let's cook:

1. Cut oxtail into 4 cm pieces or have your butcher do this for you.
2. Combine soy sauce, wine, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, chopped green onion, star anise, cinnamon sticks, orange rind and the water into a saucepan and bring to the boil.
3. Transfer this cooking base of sauces and spices to either your pressure cooker pot or your slow cooker pot. 
4. Add the Oxtail pieces to the sauce.
5. Seal the lid on your pressure cooker or your slow cooker and proceed to cook according to the directions for your appliance.
6. We cooked this in our new Pressure cooker which took 25 minutes and in our tropical heat this is the best way to cook at present. 
7. However using your slow cooker would also produce a delicious result and if I am slow cooking now I take the appliance outside and plug it in on our patio and leave it for 8 hours without heating up the kitchen. However, in the European or American winter, this would cook beautifully and cosily in the kitchen. Bring on Winter in North Queensland. 
8. Remove the lid. Transfer oxtail pieces to a serving plate, and drizzle with about 1/3 cup of the braising liquid. 
9. Sprinkle with shredded spring onion and serve with Asian greens and rice to soak up the sauce and flavours.

Absolutely delicious

Thanks for visiting my page.

Warm wishes,

Pauline