Michelin Star Beef Short Ribs at Home

This is the best short rib recipe you'll ever make. So good, still served at a two Michelin star restaurant. And here's how to make it at home. This is a classic French braised short rib by an American chef called Daniel Boulud. The thing about short rib, I don't think it gets the appropriate praise it deserves. Often braised meat is sometimes seen as a wintry or an easy sort of dish, but I think it's got just as much impact, some more of the premium cuts, if it's treated properly. Daniel's recipe starts with a ton of booze. So this is red wine. It's not the best quality red wine, but it is quite good quality. So it's something you wouldn't mind drinking. Bring that to a slight boil. You want it to be super sweet. It's gonna reinforce the sweetness of the vegetables. And then it's gonna make that sauce really sweet, robust in flavor. There's a few things that you need to know when braising meat. Short rib is probably one of the best things to learn on because it is by far some of the toughest meat you can get and lots of fat running all the way in between the meat. The fat means it's gonna give you some delicious flavor. The bone means it's gonna give you some beautiful flavor into the stock that you're cooking it in. Braising recipes usually start by coating the meat in flour. And I've just seasoned that flour as well, just to give it an extra hit. Really, really important. We're gonna do a process called browning. So it's exactly the same as getting a Maillard reaction on a steak. Dual purpose, because it will make the meat taste insane, but it will also flavor your stock and your sauce. And the best thing about this recipe is you're making your sauce at the same time as when you're cooking your meat. A beautiful one pot wonder. So I've just got four little nuggets of short rib here. If you get this from your butcher, just ask for them to cut it in half if it's really, really long, because sometimes the actual short rib wouldn't fit inside the pan. Into the pan with our short rib. Just cook this quite slowly so we can develop a really nice, solid crust. And now I'm just gonna turn the meat so all sides have been hit. You can notice my pan's not too hot. I'm trying to sort of develop this really beautiful golden crust. This is the best thing about short rib, though. Ultimately, they contain a massive amount of collagen. That, mixed with the natural gelatin that's from the bone, is gonna produce an incredibly delicious sauce. That's what we're looking for. So, leek, celery, carrots, shallot. All best mates. This veg actually isn't gonna make its way into the final sauce. We're gonna pass it off. So don't worry about doing it too fine. Really interesting about the wine. It's still super sour. And essentially what you wanna do is you wanna remove it until that disappears. So keep that reducing for a little bit longer. And then let's take these bad boys out. They look absolutely next level already. In with our shallots. So all the rest of the veg is gonna go in at the same time, but the shallots, you don't wanna miss this opportunity to add caramelized sweetness. Whack the lid on, turn it down, let them sweat down, release all that juice, and then it'll deglaze the bottom of that pan. And what we're looking for here is, again, golden caramel. That's exactly the color we want. Then what we're gonna do is add in the rest of our veg. Just crush with the side of your spoon. Two cloves of garlic. See these little bits of fond on the bottom? That's the sugar from the vegetables sticks and cooks onto the bottom. You really wanna avoid any sort of black bits on the bottom of the pan. The really important thing to know when you're doing stocks, sauces, or even these braised dishes is that intensity has a sort of profound impact in the final dish. If you don't keep the bottom of this pan clean, you will always taste it in the final product. Because you have to think you're reducing it to such a level that you can taste every little impurity. And if you burn the bottom of the pan, or even slightly scorch it, you will ultimately taste that in the final product. Our wine has finished reducing, and it's such an intense color. You can see how it's gonna add lots of sort of a beautiful, intense glossiness to the sauce. And it's almost just taking a bit more of like a syrupy consistency. Probably like the same consistency as like a blackcurrant cordial. So just slightly thicker than wine. Before we add anything else, we're gonna add in tomato puree. Probably about two large tablespoons. Really important with tomato puree that you cook it out slightly before you add anything else in. So I'm just gonna saute that off. This is the most important stage for when things start to stick. When you've sauteed off your vegetables, most of the water's come out of there, and you've just added your tomato puree. So you've got to be really special attention at this stage. Meat goes back in. Heat, importantly, goes off. The only time you're actually gonna burn your sauce is now, because you're adding stuff into the pan, and you forget that the actual caramelization is still happening. So red wine goes in, and you can see how this is gonna come together and look unreal. So we've got some beef stock. Just use some good quality stock from the supermarket. Last but not least, herbs go in. Sweetness is gonna come from these vegetables. This is gonna add a nice sort of aromatic depth. It wouldn't be a fallow video without... Do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Really, really good for braising meat at Cartouche, because it keeps everything locked underneath the liquid. It allows liquid to reduce and intensify without exposing the meat to the outside element. So it keeps everything ticking along nicely. For new viewers, I f***ing love Cartouches. If you want to cook a dish overnight, set your oven to around about 85 degrees. If you're gonna cook this in four hours, like I'm gonna cook it, braising meat temperature is perfect at about 140. You want to achieve the breakdown of the collagen at a very low temperature, because then it'll make sure that it's locked in loads more juice into the meat, while being really tender. So overnight, 85 degrees will always work, round about 10 hours. But any other time for braising meat, 140 degrees for round about three to four hours. And short ribs are best if you want to do this with, because it's super, super intense in collagen and really intense in these amino acids. So, but when it breaks down, it melts. It's one of the most beautiful things. So this has been cooking now four hours at 140 degrees. Go really nice and low and slow. Ideally, what you want to do, whenever you braise meat, you want to let it try and chill out inside the stock. The braised meat comes out of the sauce, and then all of the moisture that's inside that meat sort of steams out of it. You get very, very dry meat. So ideally what you want to do is let it rest for around about 30, 40 minutes until it's like just lightly cooled down. So I've just taken the Cartouche off and I've just basted it slightly. Those little nuggets. I mean, I don't even need to check that it's falling apart because I can tell just by moving around and touching it that it's super tender and moist. Leave it on 45 minutes until it stops steaming. Okay, so our meat is chilled down now. We've got to be really careful at this point. I don't want to break it up. I really want to keep it nice and whole just because it looks a lot more appealing as one nice, beautiful nugget that you can sort of break apart. Really careful not to let those bones slip out. It is literally just meltingly soft. So be super delicate with it. And then we've got this unbelievable sauce left in the pan. All of the collagen has been released from those bones. I'm not going to force any of this veg through because it'll just make the stock a little bit cloudy. And I've got more than enough to finish my dish. And then we're just going to bring this up to the boil and finish the sauce. Nice tip here. People actually skim this fat on the top but what I actually want is to incorporate that fat back into the sauce. That fat's probably one of the best things about a short rib. So I'm going to leave it in. I'm going to boil the sauce and just slowly stir it. And it's almost there. It's super delicious already. So we're just going to reduce it slightly. Just going to put some whole grain mustard. We'll take a ladle full of the stock, add it in there. And then this is just called making a slurry. So basically if you put the mustard straight into the sauce you'll get weird little clumps all over the place. So just making a slurry. Take a portion of the sauce out and then add your freshness, which is your cherry vinegar. And finishing a sauce is sometimes it's quite a complex process but when it tastes so good like this, it's pretty simple. All you need to do essentially is add seasoning and balance the sauce with acidity. At the moment we've got so much sweetness so much collagen in there and we don't want it to boil too much. So I'm just turning the heat down slightly just slightly reducing it and balancing the intensity of the sauce with the freshness of vinegar. Now I've just taken off just a little bit of the impure off the top but that's pretty much all it's going to need. It's quite low maintenance to be quite honest. Once we've reached this sort of consistency it's nice and thick, very deep dark. You really don't want to take it too far because it could easily become too intense. Touch of acid, it'll help balance that out. Really nicely balanced, not too intense. Just remember this is going to be super sweet. So what you want from this sauce is acidity. And just to be honest just to lift the richness of that short rib up. So this is slurry. What we've done is we've taken celeriac, some potatoes. Basically we've just cooked it down with milk. So really simple, reduce right down with the milk and then just whack the lid on your thermo or blender. So we're looking for this really nice glossy, shiny sauce. So to serve it up, just add on your nice warm puree. So this really wants to coat the entire sort of base of the plate. It's going to be like the bed for the short rib and I'm just putting my ladle, the base of my ladle in until I make a natural sort of divot. So it's had a bit of sauce on it. It's incredibly tender. I can already feel it. That just goes in the center and then just finish, touch more sauce. There we have it. Daniel Balloud's red wine glazed short rib. That is the most decadent braised bear meat I've ever tasted. You see why it's stood the test of time in Daniel's two-star restaurant. Oh, they're all coming in. Go on lad, get them all.