Thursday, January 13, 2022

Braised Beef Oxtail with Asian style flavours, and cooked in the Pressure Cooker

 

This Braised Beef Oxtail dish, tasting of typical delicious Chinese flavours is on constant rotation in our kitchen.  If you enjoy Asian style cuisine you will love this dish. Oxtail was a budget cut of beef 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. This dish brings restaurant standard food into your own home, at a time in history when we are reverting to eating more at home to keep safe from catching Covid19.

As my regular readers know, I live in the Queensland Tropics, and we're in the middle of a very hot Summer. So it's the pressure cooker to the rescue for this very tasty meal. I crave for dishes based on Asian flavours sometimes, particularly in Summer. We pressure cooked and braised the meat 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 for folk in the Northern Hemisphere. 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 tucked away in the bones. It's a keeper and perfect for a family meal. Please take my word for it, it's a cinch to make.

The only problem is that the slow braising cuts of meat have become quite expensive at the moment, so the humble oxtail deserves the special treatment that it receives here. This is a perfect meal to enjoy on the weekend, wherever you are.

 Braised Beef Oxtail with Asian flavours

Ingredients:

1 kg beef oxtail, trimmed
1/2 cup (125 ml) Japanese or Korean soy sauce
1/4 cup Chinese cooking wine
1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
6 cloves garlic, bruised
12 cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thickly
4 green onions, chopped coarsely
2 star anise
2 cinnamon sticks
3 x 5 cm 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 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 be spreading beautiful aromas as it cooks 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  a 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

 I sometimes 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 the disappointment. 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  pastes and sauces from a bottle if they feel like an Asian meal. However there is no need with this recipe, as this easy combination of spices gives a perfect result. 

Warm wishes and stay safe everyone. Have a great weekend.

Pauline

21 comments:

  1. OX tails are my top favourite! Yours looks so tender, flavourful and fingerlickingly delicious.

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    1. Thanks so much Angie, we enjoy them too, particularly cooked this way.

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  2. I've never made oxtail before, but I've often read recipes for it, and have been tempted. I love the Asian flavors you give this one!

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    1. Jeff I think you would enjoy a meal of oxtail cooked this way. Just perfect for a nice change. Thanks so much for your interest.

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  3. oxtail? mm not sure if i've ever had it before. I am a bit conflicted with asian flavours. oddly as i get older, i prefer the simple flavours of my youth (with added extras of course). so asian doesn't come into my repertoire really tho i'm sure this is delish pauline!

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    1. It's interesting how you are preferring simple flavours Sherry, as I find as I get older, I am after more and more flavour, and during Summer, I just love the Asian combinations in food. I was brought up with a diverse variety of foods though. Thanks for your comment.

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  4. As you know from my recent post, we love oxtail and I can’t wait to make this version!

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    1. Thanks David, I know you will really do this recipe justice. It's quite special.

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  5. I sometimes use oxtail in a pasta sauce or a braise, but haven't used Asian flavors with it. I like the idea! This looks wonderful -- thanks.

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    1. Thanks KR, I really enjoy Asian flavours with this cut of meat, but I've never tasted it in a pasta sauce. I would really like to taste that dish.

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  6. When restaurants made oxtail part of their menus, the price went up! I have an Asian recipe to try for lamb shanks which I am waiting for cooler weather to do. Just the thought of a hot cooked meal right now has me melting, and I don't even think our temperatures are as high as yours. My butcher has beef cheeks at a low price so I am going to play around with them - Italian flavours as like you, I can do that off the top of my head.

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    1. Thanks Tandy, yes I can't believe the cost now of meat that used to be sold as slow cooking budget cuts. Anyway, they still taste great.

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  7. It looks so tender and flavoursome! I need to try this recipe... Actually I haven't tried oxtail since one needs to go to some special butchershop for such products.... I need to see where to get some !

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    1. Gosh I hope you can find oxtail somewhere near where you live in France. If you nave success I would love to know as my son lives in Montpellier, and I will recommend to him that he tries to buy it.

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  8. Oxtail is not something that I have a lot of experience with. I have had it a couple times in a restaurant, and it was delicious. Maybe I'll have to try tackling this at home - I do love learning how to cook with different ingredients. Sounds like a delicious recipe, Pauline!!

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    1. Thanks David, this recipe is worth the effort and full of flavour.

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  9. We enjoy slow braised oxtail with gnocchi from time to time, but I've not tried an Asian inspired version. Your recipe sound very good, thus I've just added oxsvan (oxtail) to our weekly food delivery. I wish it wasn't so expensive here as it's about $15 AUD/Kg here. But, for a dish like this, I say "no worries"...

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  10. Ron, oxtail with gnocchi sounds very interesting. I am becoming very used to cuts of meat which used to be budget cuts being sold for at least $15 a kilo. However because of that I always feel the need to do something special with it. Thanks and take care.

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  11. Very new and unique recipe for us! Looks delicious.

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