Braised beef
Three hours, almost all of it unattended. Brown the meat properly or the rest is wasted.
- 420
- kcal
- 41g
- protein
- 21g
- fat
- 12g
- carbs
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 180 min
- Serves
- 6
Photograph by Nano Erdozain on Pexels
Ingredients
- 3 lb beef chuck, cut into large pieces
- 2 onions, sliced
- 2 carrots, chunked
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 cups beef stock
- 1 cup red wine
- 2 bay leaves, a sprig of thyme
Method
-
1
Dry the beef thoroughly and brown it hard in batches. Crowding the pan steams it and costs you the flavor.
-
2
Soften the onions and carrots in the same pan, add the garlic and tomato paste, cook two minutes.
-
3
Deglaze with the wine and reduce by half, scraping the base.
-
4
Return the beef, add stock to come halfway up, and the herbs.
-
5
Cover and cook at 300°F for 2.5 to 3 hours, until a fork twists in the meat without effort.
-
6
Rest 20 minutes. Skim the fat, reduce the sauce if it needs it.
The browning is the dish
If you take one thing from this recipe it is that browning the meat properly is not a preliminary step you can rush — it is where most of the flavour is created. The Maillard reaction produces hundreds of aromatic compounds that simply do not exist in unbrowned meat, and no amount of subsequent simmering generates them.
Two rules make it work. Dry the beef thoroughly with paper towel, because water on the surface has to boil off before the surface can exceed 100°C and start browning. And work in batches with space between the pieces: crowding the pan drops the temperature and traps steam, and you end up with grey meat and a sad pan.
Why chuck, and why not fillet
Chuck is full of collagen, which is exactly what you want. Over three hours at a low temperature that collagen converts to gelatine, which is what gives a braise its body and what makes the meat feel succulent rather than merely soft. A lean, tender cut has no collagen to convert; braised, it just dries out and shreds.
This is why an expensive cut makes a worse braise than a cheap one, which is one of the more satisfying facts in cooking.
Temperature and time
300°F in the oven rather than a simmer on the hob. Oven heat surrounds the pot evenly and holds a gentle temperature without attention; a hob heats from below and tends to boil, and a boiling braise tightens muscle fibres and squeezes moisture out. You are looking for the occasional lazy bubble, nothing more.
The fork test beats the clock. When a fork twists in the meat with no resistance it is ready, and that might be two and a half hours or three and a half depending on the animal.
The day-after rule
This is better the next day, and meaningfully so. Cooling lets the meat reabsorb liquid, the fat solidifies on top and can be lifted off cleanly, and the flavours settle. If you have the option, cook it a day ahead deliberately rather than as damage control.
What it is worth nutritionally
41 g of protein a serving, and 21 g of fat — most of which you can control by skimming after chilling. Beef is one of the best sources of heme iron, absorbed at several times the rate of the iron in plants, and of zinc and B12. See iron-rich foods for why that absorption difference matters.
