The Caribbean · Volume 10, Pimento Smoke, the Maroon Fire and the Ital Table
Oxtail
Jamaica
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 5 hours
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Oxtail
Serves 6 . About 3 hours, plus at least 2 hours' marinating
Ingredients
An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.
- 1.5kg, cut into bite-sized pieces oxtail
- 1 tsp, crushed whole berries pimento
Method
- Braise the oxtail using West-African-descended one-pot technique, pimento named specifically among the spices used.
Notes
Its status has since inverted entirely, from cheap offcut to premium-priced butcher's cut, a genuinely useful economic detail this chapter states plainly rather than glossing over.
What a modern chef changes
Seared, then a sous vide braise reduced to a consommé
Method
- Sear the oxtail hard first for real Maillard depth.
- Braise sous vide at a low, held temperature for considerably longer than a stovetop simmer would allow without drying the meat out, giving a fall-apart texture with none of the greying a rolling boil produces.
- Reduce and clarify the braising liquid through a chinois into something closer to a real consommé, poured back over the meat and butter beans only at the point of serving rather than left to muddy together in the pot.