Oxtail

As tradition built it

Oxtail

Serves 6. About 1 hour in a pressure cooker, plus at least 2 hours' marinating.

Ingredients

The marinade

• 1.5kg oxtail, cut into bite size pieces
• 125ml white vinegar, with 1 litre water, for washing
• 6 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp fish and meat sauce
• 2 tsp browning
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 2 tsp hot pepper sauce
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ginger, garlic and pimento seasoning
• 1 tsp pimento berries, crushed

The pot

• 60ml vegetable or olive oil
• 1 litre boiling water
• 2 stalks spring onion, chopped
• 1 sprig thyme
• 1 medium red pepper, finely sliced
• ½ medium white onion, chopped
• 1 tin (400g) butter beans, drained
• 250g tomato ketchup
• 2 tomatoes, chopped

Method

1. Wash the oxtail in the vinegar and water.
2. Season it with the garlic, fish and meat sauce, browning, black pepper, hot pepper sauce, salt, the seasoning and the crushed pimento. Cover and leave it in the fridge at least 2 hours.
3. Heat the oil in a pressure cooker and brown the oxtail, about 10 minutes.
4. Add the boiling water, seal, and pressure cook 25 to 30 minutes. Take it off the heat and let it cool.
5. Stir in the spring onion, thyme, red pepper, onion, butter beans, ketchup and tomato. Cover and simmer 10 to 15 minutes more.
6. Serve with boiled rice and a green salad.

Notes

Its status has since inverted entirely, from cheap offcut to premium-priced butcher's cut.

The recipe is Grace Foods' UK oxtail stew; its method also calls for the remaining garlic at the end, though its list puts all six cloves in the marinade. Taneisha Morris braises hers in a Dutch oven for 1 to 2 hours, adding water a little at a time, with soy and brown sugar and a single tablespoon of ketchup.

What a modern chef changes

Seared, then a sous vide braise reduced to a consommé

Method

1. Sear the oxtail hard first for real Maillard depth.
2. 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.
3. 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.