FoodieCuisine.com

By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com

Braised short ribs

You may never have cooked short ribs before but let me tell you right now that they taste amazing if you cook them properly.  I realize that most things do taste great, if cooked properly, but short ribs are a nice surprise given their low quality on the meat food chain.  For this story I made some short rib sandwiches for a Super Bowl Party and they were a huge hit with the crowd.  I didn’t have a single one left.

Slow Cooking – Why It Works

The only real way to cook a tough piece of meat into something you would want to eat is to break down the connective tissue and  collagen in the meat.  This is accomplished through long cooking times or high pressure cooking.  You also have the added difficulty of keeping the meat moist during the long cooking required.  Keeping the proper mix of moisture during the time required is the hard part of the process but is not insurmountable.  If you have read any of my BBQ posts you already know something about this process as slow-cooked BBQ is all about taking tough pieces of meat and turning them into something tasty.

FirstStep – Preparing The Meat

The first step to braising anything be it short ribs, a roast, or even chile verde, is to sear (also called browning) the meat.  Contrary to popular belief this does not “seal” in the juices.  Juice flows out of seared meat just as easily as it does from raw meat.  What searing does though is to brown the outside of the meat and creates a very flavorful taste.  It is what accounts for the “roasted” taste associated with braised foods.  If you don’t sear the meat, you won’t experience the full benefits of slow cooking.  This is one reason that causes slow-cooked items to taste bland.  It’s due to too little seasoning as well as not searing or browning the protein (meat) first.  Not searing can also cause your dish to turn out mushy and have a bad texture.  The browning not only creates a nice flavor but also gives the meat a nice texture.

Short ribs seasoned

You may be asking about how the meat should be cut?  That’s a good question and really depends on what you are braising.  Since this article is about short ribs I’ll focus on them.  For short ribs, each rib should be about 3-4 inches long.  The butcher should cut them for you at this length though so in reality all you have to do is to buy the meat and salt and pepper it.  Ah, another step, salt and peppering!  That’s right, you must season all sides of the meat before searing it or the seasoning will not stick to the meat. 

First off the meat should be close to room temperature.  You don’t want to pull it straight out of the refrigerator and then sear it as the meat will take too long to sear.  Pull it out of the refrigerator, season it with salt and pepper, and then cover it for 30 minutes to an hour while it comes up to room temperature.  A good thing to do before seasoning the meat is to dry it as much as possible with a kitchen towel before you season it.  Dry meat is much easier to sear than wet meat since there is no water to cook off first.  When the meat is wet, the wet portions must be cooked off before the meat starts to sear.

Second Step – Searing The Meat

Searing is somewhat easy.  First, put some olive oil and butter into a dutch oven and turn the heat on high.  You should have enough oil and butter to just cover the bottom of the pan but not so much that the meat is submerged in it.  You also can use bacon grease for this step if you want a little extra flavor.  Many times I will first render some pancetta or sliced bacon in the dutch oven, remove it with a slotted spoon, and add oil and butter to the dish to sear the meat.

Short ribs seared

Once the oil and butter (or oil and butter and bacon fat) is sizzling hot, add the seasoned and not-so-cold meat to the dish.  You should not flip it constantly as that will mess up the searing process.  In fact, the meat will stay in the pan much longer than you think it should.  Basically you want to almost burn the meat but not quite.  This requires some experimentation as there are many factors involved such as the cut of meat, the type of meat, the cut size, the size of the pan, how much oil you used, etc.  I use the sniff test and when the meat smells like it is about to burn, I flip it over. 

You only have to flip it once as you only need to sear two sides.  When you flip it over the seared side should be a dark brown color but not black.  Let the other side cook and remove the meat from the pan when the second side smells done.  In this scenario I removed the meat to a cookie sheet to let it rest.  The entire process used 5 pounds of short ribs which meant I seared it in two batches.  You don’t want to crowd the dutch oven too tightly as it can cause searing problems by cooling the pan too much.  Strive for about half an inch around each piece of meat if you can.

Third Step – The Base

Short rib braising sauce

With the meat pulled from the dutch oven I was ready to start the base of the braising sauce.  Alsmost all braising starts with a Mirepoix and this dish is no different.  It’s simple really as you take very finely diced carrot, celery, and onion and cook it in oil and butter.  The trick here is to not clean the pot after braising the meat.  You want to leave it as is and not clean it at all.  The brown bits left on the bottom of the dutch oven are full of flavor and should not be removed.  I did this for my Ragu article and you may read about me doing it for many other dishes. 

I also like to add some sliced fresh garlic in when making the Mirepoix along with some crushed red pepper.  It gives the dish a little kick and adds another dimension of flavor.  Once the carrot, celery, and onion were softened I added the wine, broth, sherry, garlic, bay leaves, and thyme to the pot.  I brought the mixture to a boil and made sure to scrape the bottom of the dutch oven until there was no resistence from the seared meat.

Fourth Step – Return The Meat to The Pot

Short ribs with braising liquid

Now comes the easy part where you put the meat you seared back into the pot.  If you used any bacon to make the searing oil you should put it back into the dish at this point as well.  The meat should barely break the surface of the braising liquid but not be completely submerged.  It’s ok if some of it’s submerged but it should not be completely under the liquid if you can avoid it.  This is another important step as meat that is completely submerged can have a mushy texture and ruin the effect. 

Once the mixture is boiling again it’s then time to turn the temperature down to a very low simmer.  I use the lowest setting on my stove.  Cover the dish and check on it every 30 minutes to make sure nothing is sticking or burning.  The easiest thing to do is to move the short ribs around in the pot every 30 minutes and scrape the bottom of the dish. 

Fifth Step – Remove From Heat and Cool

After about 2 hours the short ribs should be done.  At this point turn off the heat and set the dish off to the side for the meat to cool with the lid removed or partially on.  The cooling process can take an hour or so and really depends on the ambient temperature of your house.

Sixth Step – Prepare the Short Ribs

Short ribs braised

With the meat cooled you remove just the meat from the pot and put the ribs on a work surface such as a large cutting board.  Short ribs have a lot of fat and other undesirable elements to them that you must pull away before serving.  I used my nature provided tools called hands (washed of course) and pulled the meat away from the bones.  There is a sheath around each bone that is inedible as well and must be removed.  With short ribs there is quite a bit of throw away material but by starting with 5 pounds of ribs you will have enough meat to make at least 8 sandwiches with lots of meat on each one.  Carefully remove all of the meat and put it aside in a nice bowl for use in making the sandwiches.

With the meat pulled away, you then return it to the dutch oven where the braising liquid was.  By this time you probably don’t have much liquid left in the pan but you do have tons of flavor in there.  Mix the meat together with the braising liquid and you will be left with a pot of very tasty braised beef.  At this point you can make sandwiches, chili, or a variety of dishes.

Seventh Step – Making the Sandwiches

I used the recipe from Bon Appetit magazine’s February 2010 issue to make the sandwiches which were pretty simple to put together.  I bought a loaf of fresh sourdough bread from The Fresh Market and cut it into 16 slices.  I then buttered one side of each slice with Parma Butter (my favorite butter of all time.)  I put 8 slices on a cutting board and topped each slice with 1/8th of the meat mixture from the dutch oven.  I then topped each mound of meat with freshly shredded Monterey Jack cheese (thank you Jennie for shredding the cheese!).  Each mound was then covered with some carmelized onions I had made and finally topped with fresh arugula. 

I put a slice of bread on top of the 8 mounds to complete the sandwiches and then used my trusty griddle to cook the sandwiches until they were golden brown.  I flipped the sandwiches once, and removed them from the griddle when done.  Each was cut into four slices and served straight from the cutting board to the party guests.  It took me about 5 minutes to get everyone’s attention to try the sandwiches but word spread quickly and they were gone before I even had time to check on them.  In fact I had people coming up and asking if I had more stashed away somewhere.  I may have had a personal one slightly hidden away but that was for me.  I learned a long time ago that I typically don’t get to eat my own food if I don’t stash a plate away during parties.  Luckily my wife does a great job of making me a personal plate that I get around to eating a few hours after the party starts.

I’ll be making braised short ribs again as they tasted absolutely wonderful and at $5.99 a pound they aren’t terribly expensive.  Give them a try!

The Recipe I used for this article came from Bon Appetit’s February 2010 Issue:

5 pounds short ribs
1/4 cut butter
3 celery stalks
2 peeled carrots
1 medium onion
1 1/4 cups dry red wine
1/2 cup beef broth
1/3 cup sherry
2 peeled garlic cloves
2 bay leaves
1 thyme sprig (fresh)

The short rib sandwich is attributed to a restaurant called Joan’s on Third in Los Angeles.  Stop by and order one of these delectable items if you are in town there!

By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com

Garlic

I get asked about roasted garlic quite often so here is the really quick story on how to roast your own.  Garlic by itself is a very pungent ingredient and sometimes even an appetizer unto itself.  One nice way to remove the sharp flavor of raw garlic is to roast it first.

Basic Steps

There are a few basic steps involved in roasting garlic and they are as follows:

1. Buy a whole head of garlic
2. Pull the head apart to reveal whole cloves
3. Peel the cloves
4. Cut a 10″ x 10″ sheet of aluminum foil
5. Place the garlic in the middle
6. Drizzle olive oil over the top
7. Season with salt and pepper
8. Wrap the foil tightly around the garlic forming a ball
9. Bake at 450 degrees for 30-45 minutes

Peeling Garlic

The part about buying the garlic and pulling apart the cloves should be rather obvious.  How to peel garlic?  That’s easy actually.  With the whole clove on the cutting board, place your chef’s knife on it’s side on top of the clove.  Give the side of the knife a nice slap with the palm of your hand.  The force should be enough to slightly crush the garlic but not destroy it.  This force will then enable you to slide the skin off of the garlic easily.  If you tap it too lightly, just hit it again but harder.  If you smash the garlic, use less force on the next try.  When complete your garlic should look like the picture above.  Be careful so that you don’t cut yourself.  If you aren’t comfortable with using a knife this way you can always buy a garlic peeler and go that route.

Season and Wrap it Up

Once the garlic is peeled, you should take the 10 or so cloves and put them in the center of the piece of aluminum foil.  I usually just tear a sheet off about 10″ long for this.  With the garlic in the center, drizzle a nice extra virgin olive oil over the top and then season with salt and pepper.  I prefer to use a nice oillike Villa Cappelli‘s Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  With the garlic seasoned it’s time to wrap it up tightly.  You do this by pulling the sides together and forming a aluminum bulb of what resembles a whole head of garlic.  Amazing how the design looks like what you started with eh?

Bake it

Put the ball of foil into the oven, set it at 450 degrees, and then wait about 45 minutes.  Sometimes mine is ready in 30 minutes and sometimes it takes an hour.  It really just depends on the garlic you are working with.  The best way to tell is the smell and I can’t write about how to do that.  You will learn over time what to keep a nose out for though.

When the time is up (and the garlic smells right,) pull it out of the oven with a hot pad or a pair of tongs and let it rest.  You should let it rest for 30 minutes or more to let it cool down to room temperature.  Once it’s cool, unwrap the garlic and inside you will find some tasty goodness.

Serving Tips

You can use the roasted garlic in stews, soups, as part of a cheese platter, or even spread it on top of freshly tosted bread.  Basically you can use it as a garlic replacement in anything and it will give you a nice extra layer of flavor.  Personally, I roast garlic for many different things and it never disappoints.  The other nice thing is that you can roast it days ahead of time.  Just put what you don’t use in a air-tight container in the refrigerator and save it for up to 5 days.

One final note about devices made for roasting garlic.  You can find them in most cooking stores and even in grocery stores.  While you may find them useful, I find that a wad of aluminum foil does the trick just as well.  If you are concerned about the health impact of roasting in aluminum foil then I’d consider one.  I prefer to keep my number of speciality items (and clutter) down to a minimum; therefore, I don’t use one.

Eating Light Tip

Drain as much of the olive oil as you can away from the garlic before you eat it.  The flavor will still be there but without the extra few calories.

Bon appétit!

I made this dip for Superbowl Sunday and it was a big hit.  There were other things I made as well but this one kept people coming back for more.  The original recipe was sourced from Bon Appetit’s website.

I suggest you taste the olive oil BEFORE you drizzle it over the dip.  Olive oil can have a very bad taste to it.  It is the star of the show here and will be eaten directly; therefore, you need to use one that tastes good.  I used Villa Cappelli Extra Virgin Olive Oil 2008 Harvest that I ordered from Olio2go for this recipe.  And no, I don’t get a commission for saying that. 😉

Eating Light Tip

You could easily cut a few calories out of this dish by using low-fat milk.  The cheese is more than creamy enough and the switch from whole to low-fat milk won’t make a difference.  You could also use whole wheat or any other crackers that are lower in fat and calories than seeded crackers.  Check the labels to see which cracker has the least amount of calories per gram.  It will only reduce the number of calories a little, but every bit helps!

By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com

BBQ Chicken

In my lastest round of testing I decided to BBQ chicken thighs.  I’ve never really focused on BBQ chicken as it’s not something I’ve ever been fond of (over pork or beef).  After a few tests I will say this though, BBQ chicken is now my favorite item of them all!BrineChicken loses it’s moisture VERY quickly when you cook it.  When you smoke meat you have to do so “low and slow” which means cooking it for a long time.  Due to this, and the fact that chicken dries out quickly, you must add fluid to the meat.

In the case of chicken, the easiest way to saturate the protein with liquid is to put the chicken in a brine solution.  This does two things for you.  The first is that it adds flavor to the meat from the salt and other spices you make the brine out of.  The second thing is it adds the much needed moisture to the chicken and helps keep it from drying out during the long smoking process.  I use the term “long” loosely here as chicken will smoke in right around three hours.  This is much quicker than other meats.  Brining is simple really once you get used to it. 

You will need the following to do this:

• Plastic bags to hold the brined chicken, or a large container that you can fit in your refrigerator
• 1 Gallon Water
• 2 cups Soy sauce
• 1 cup Salt
• Sugar
• Spices (your choice here, depends on what you like)
• Chicken thighs (or whole chickens, I used thighs in this test)

Chicken Brining

The first thing you need to do is fill a large stock pot with water and leave room for the soy sauce and other ingredients.  Add the other ingredients to the pot and set it on high.  Once the liquid comes to a boil, let it boil for another 10 minutes and then shut the heat off.

Chicken Brining

Once the brine solution is nice and boiled it needs to cool down to room temperature.  This is important because you don’t want to boil the chicken in the hot brine or put the liquid in your refrigerator.  If you put hot liquid in the refrigerator it will heat up the inside and create an unsafe food environment (bacteria will grow faster at higher temperatures.)  If you put the chicken in the hot brine it will effectively cook the chicken, which is bad as well.  If you don’t want to wait a couple of hours for the solution to cool down you can submerge bags of ice (sealed tightly) into the liquid and keep replacing the melted ice until the brine is nice and cool.

Armed with a room temperature (or cooled) brine, it is safe to put your chicken thighs into the brine.  You must use a container that allows you to completely submerge the chicken pieces in the liquid.  Look at my photos to see how I have the chicken thighs sealed in plastic bags.  They are completely encased in the liquid and I pressed all air out of them as I closed the bags.  If I had the room, I would put the chicken in a clean painters bucket (not a used one!) and store it in the refrigerator.  Basically you want the chicken to be completely covered with liquid.  Put the brined chicken in the refrigerator once it’s submerged and sealed.  If you are using a bucket, you may want to put a weight on top of the chicken to keep it from floating.

How long you brine your chicken really depends on what you are brining.  For example, I do not recommend brining chicken breasts, as they do not contain enough fat to survive very well in the smoking process.  For chicken thighs, and for this test, I brined my chicken for 10 hours.  I wanted to simulate competition cooking where you aren’t given a ton of time to prepare your meat once it’s inspected and thats why I went with the time I did.

Rinse and Trim

Once the chicken had brined for 10 hours, I removed it from the brine solution and rinsed it off completely.  This is another important steps as you want to rinse off any excess salt that stuck to the chicken during the process.  After the thighs were rinsed I then dried them completely with paper towels (or hand towels that I washed before and after.)  I put them in a large metal bowl after they were dried off and set them out for trimming.

Chicken Thigh Not Trimmed

Chicken thighs have a lot of extra skin, fat, and grisle on them that is not appealing to eat.  Fat normally would render off in the smoker but given the short time chicken has to smoke, it won’t have time to render completely.  This is why it’s important to trim off any excess fat (not quite all of it, but a good amount.)  The chicken thighs have fat internal to the meat structure and that will be enough for your needs.  For the skin you should trim it enough so that there is a nice flap of skin that just barely covers the top of the chicken thigh.  Look at my picture to see the before and after trim of the thigh.  In the first photo you can see where I have the skin spread out completely.  It is still attached underneath but takes up a large area when spread out.  I run the edge of my knife along the thigh and cut off the excess skin that is sticking out.  This leaves me a nice cut of skin (not visible in the picture) that just barely covers the bottom of the thigh.

I put all of the trimmed thighs back into the metal pan and proceeded to get ready for the next steps.

Oil and Rub

I go through many steps to ensure the chicken does not get dry while smoking and the oil is another one of those steps.  I used peanut oil in this test which is readily available from the supermarket.  I poured enough peanut oil into the bowl to coat the chicken thighs and rolled them over a few times to complete coat them in oil.  I was careful not to tear the skin from the thighs as it is very easy to do so if you are not careful.

Chicken Spice Rub

For the rub I mixed salt, sugar, garlic powder, chili powder, onion powder, and some other spices.  You will have to experiment here with what you like as your tastes will vary.  The spice rub I use is much lighter than the one I use for pork and beef which is why it’s not as red as you may expect.  This is mainly due to my leaving out of the paprika.  Another thing to keep in mind is that the brine has a lot of flavor in it.  This means you do not have to use as much of a spice rub on the chicken as you would on pork or beef.  Some people even leave the spice rub off completely since the brining process adds so much flavor.

I liberally sprinkle the rub over the chicken thighs and turn them a few times in the process.  I continue adding rub until they are coated pretty well all over.  I was careful not to tear of the skin again here as turning the thighs can easily do this.  Once I was satisfied with the level of spice coating, I moved to the next step.

Place and Smoke

I’ve watch the show BBQ Pitmasters, on TLC, for just about every episode and one thing I saw them do was to put their chicken thighs into muffin pans.  The cooking method allows the thighs to cook into a nice round shape.  Sorry Myron, but I consider it a technique and won’t be sending royalties your way anytime soon. 😉

Chicken in Muffin Pans

I put the chicken thighs into muffin pans and sprinkled rub over the top of them.  I put the thighs in skin-side up and made sure the skin covered the exposed areas.  I’m only using a package of eleven chicken thighs for this test so you will see that I am short one thigh for the twelve total spaces available in the pans.

I turned my FEC-100 smoker up to 350 degrees and put the muffin pans in on the 2nd shelf from the top.  I let them cook at this temperature for 30 minutes using Washington Apple wood for the fuel.  After the 30 minutes passed I lowered the temperature to 226 degrees and cooked them for another 2 hours or so.  The internal temperature of the thighs will go past 180 degrees which is fine for chicken thighs.  The amount of fat in the thighs allows you plenty of room to play.

Sauce and Serve

BBQ Chicken - Different Plates

I pulled the thighs out of the smoker and let them rest for about 15 minutes.  Resting is important as it lets the meat soak up any juices that were squeezed out in the cooking process.  I pulled the thighs out of the muffin pans using tongs and plated them.  On half of the thighs I put a homemade BBQ sauce I will talk about in another article.  I left the other half of the thighs “dry” without any sauce added.  Both types of chicken thighs came out tasting wonderful!  You can’t really tell from the pictures but they were very tender and had a great flavor.

At the end of the day I was very happy with the results and will be cooking more chicken in the future.  I can’t think of much I would change this next time around except maybe to try different finishing sauces.  I hope you enjoyed this article and give BBQ chicken a try yourself in the future.

Eating Light Tip

Most BBQ before you add the sauce is light in fat since it has cooked long enough to render the fat away.  The only thing really fattening in this dish other than the sauce is the skin.  If you want to remove a few calories, skip the sauce and peel the skin off before eating the chicken.  I also pick out any fat that is left over when eating this dish.  It’s not much, but as I always say, every little bit helps.

By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com

The Mission

Mirepoix cooked down in butter and oil

One of my favorite dishes is Tagliatelle al Ragù.  The word comes from the French word ragôut, which derives from the word to wake up the appetite or to allow more taste.  Basically ragôut is a stew of meat cooked very slowly to allow it to be edible since it starts out with very tough meats.

I mention Tagliatelle in here as typically I like to cook my Ragù with thin strips of fresh pasta which is what Tagliatelle stands for.  For this dish I actually deviated from the norm though and made Orecchiette.  Orecchiette is pasta, shaped into what looks like an ear.

Ragù

Ragù, when made properly is nothing like the jars of unsavory sauce you find in the grocery store.  What is contained in those jars is no more a “true” Ragù than the t-bone special at a chain breakfast house is a “true” steak.

At the end of the day Ragù is taking simple ingredients, with very few spices, and cooking them down for several hours.  This cooking process usually takes at least 3 hours and 6 hours is not unheard of.  In fact, I cook my Ragù for about 6 hours and the one I made before this time cooked for about 10 hours.  As long as you follow food safety rules, the longer the better is the general rule for Ragù.

Mirepoix non-diced

Mirepoix

The first thing that goes into a good Ragù is the Mirepoix.  Mirepoix is simply finely diced carrots, onions, and celery.  In the case of a Ragù you take the mirepoix and sautee them together in a mixture of butter and oil.

Finely dice the carrot, onion, and celery.  While you are doing this, heat up your dutch oven  on medium-high and put the butter and oil in it.  If you take a long time to dice your vegetables you may want to watch the butter and oil to make sure it doesn’t burn.  Turn down the temperature until you are ready to add the vegetables if this happens and then turn it back up.

When you add the vegetables in this is the time to add the salt, pepper, and I like some red pepper flakes to go in the mix as well.  This forms the foundation of spice flavor for the dish and eventually will not have to be adjusted again once you get the system down.

Puglia Olive Oil

For the extra virgin olive oil I really like the olive oil from the Puglia region of Italy.  I’ll talk more about it in another blog post, but needless to say it’s by far my favorite region to buy olive oil from and is what I use in this recipe.  I can’t stress enough how important this is since the flavor of your olive oil will carry through to your final dish.  It will get hidden the longer you cook your food, or not, but is very noticeable in things like salad dressings.  You should always taste the olive oil you plan to cook with before using it.  You will be surprised at how bad some olive oil really tastes.  The price does not equate to flavor either.  Some cheap olive oil tastes better than the more expensive oil.  For this round I bought my oil from Olio2Go.

Burro di Parma and Puglia Olive Oil

Burro di Parma

For the butter in the recipe I soley use Burro di Parma, or butter of Parma.  It’s the same butter used to make Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and has a wonderful flavor.  If you can find it in your area I highly suggest you buy it for your cooking.

Once again, it’s all about the flavor and the flavor of your butter will carry through to the end of your dish.  If you can’t find Burro di Parma I recommend any other unsalted butter.  Land O’ Lakes makes a nice one.

Staub Dutch Oven

Cooking the Mirepoix

By this time you should have the Mirepoix added to the simmering butter and oil.  You should cook the Mirepoix for about 10 minutes and do so until it’s very tender.  Be careful not to burn the vegetables or turn them dark brown.  They will get a little brown around the edges but the goal here is tender vegetables, not burned ones.  During this process the cooking vegetables should give off a very nice aroma.  This is why they call the Mirepoix the aromatics of the dish.

Staub Dutch Oven with melted Burro di Parma

I almost forgot to talk about another important part of the dish, the pot you cook it in!  I use a Staub Dutch Oven to cook my Ragù, stews, and anything I braise.  This is important as you need a cooking vessel that will not burn the Ragù as it cooks slowly and you want something that will retain heat well during the slow cooking process.

If it’s too thin you will never obtain the slow-cook necessary and the wrong material can leave you with a burned Ragu.  The Staub dutch oven, and others like it, are great because it is made out of cast iron with a porcelin finish.

Ragù Meats

The Meat

For Ragù you typically use beef, pork, and lamb.  I didn’t have quick access to lamb near my house (and buffalo is lower in calories) so I opted to buy ground buffalo instead.  Buffalo, or bison as it’s called, is quite common to my area and is readily available at the grocery store.  I prefer ground Angus chuck beef to ground round and the ground pork is your typical Jimmy Dean sausage roll.

I like to buy pancetta that is sliced from the deli at the Fresh Market but didn’t have time to go there.  I opted to purchase the pancetta from the local supermarket instead and bought the store brand.  Pancetta is just Italian bacon that has not been smoked.  When sliced it comes in disc form too which makes it look different than American bacon.  I like it because the curing process to make it takes away some of the rubbery texture you find in American bacon.

Ragù meat in the dutch oven

Ragù meat with pancetta

Once the Mirepoix is cooked to a very tender state it’s time to add the beef, pork, and the buffalo (or lamb if you are using it.)  You are not to add the pancetta yet in this step.  Chop the three meats with a wooden spoon and mix them until everything is distributed evenly in the dutch oven.

I turn my gas stove up to high at this point because you will need to brown the meat in the pot.  Your stove may vary but mine requires a high temperature setting.  The meat will cook for several minutes in order to obtain a nice brown crust.

Be careful to not stir the meat too soon as it will not brown and you will lose all of the flavor goodness obtained during the browning phase.  You also have to be careful as not to burn the meat either though!  Once the meat is nice and brown all over you then add the pancetta to the dish and let it cook down until the fat is mostly rendered out.  About 10 minutes for this phase should be enough.

Tomato Paste

This is an area of the story where I really don’t have much to say other than it’s time to add the tomato paste to the meat and stir it around until completely incorporated.  You need to let it cook for about two minutes here.  There is no real brand of paste that I prefer as it all tastes pretty much the same.  I happened to have used Contandina tomato paste in this instance.  I’ll use it over most other things I find in the grocery store if given the chance.

Wine and tomatoes used

 The Wine

Now that the meats are browned and cooked down somewhat it’s time to add the red wine.  Personally, I’ve tried five or six different red wines in this process and my favorite by far is the Paul Jaboulet Aine, Parallele 45, Cotes du Rhone.

It’s only $12-$13 US Dollars, which makes it a very inexpensive wine, and works well as a table or party wine as well.  I appreciate the taste from it and what you don’t use for cooking you can drink if you so desire!

I have three to four bottles of it at any given time sitting on my cooking shelf.  For this recipe add a cup of the Côtes du Rhône red wine to the dish.  If you don’t drink or like alcohol, don’t worry, as all of the alcohol will burn off.  Stir the meat and be sure to scrape the bottom of the pan with your wooden spoon.  Your goal is to dislodge all of the brown bits of flavor stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Keep doing this until the bottom of the dutch oven is nice and smooth.  The wine should come up to a boil and be allowed to cook for 5-10 minutes.

The Tomatoes

I like to use tomatoes in my Ragù and you may read how it’s not traditional to use many of them.  This is true, but you know what, it tastes really good so I do it anyway.  The recipe I use calls for two 28 ounce cans of peeled whole tomatoes.  I prefer the San Marzano Tomatoes, Whole (Case of 12 - 28oz Cans)San Marzano Tomatoes, Whole (Case of 12 - 28oz Cans)

Vita-Mix Blender