Braising

Low & Slow in a Pot



Perhaps it seems odd to have a favorite cooking method. I know it seems odd to me. But I love braising. There's something irresistible about taking a tough, cheap cut of meat and turning it into a tender cut of meat. And then there's the sauce.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago I featured canard au vin. This dish is a variation on Boeuf Daube and Coq au Vin. Popular throughout France, it's traditionally made with rooster (coq) past it prime, tough, and stringy. The coq is simmered for several hours in the region's wine (often a red) with aromatics such as onion, carrots, and celery and in addition to a bird that's fall-apart tender you end up with a deeply flavored wine sauce that is made for sopping up with a good country bread. This is a sauce that will make you think you're in heaven.

The best cuts for braising have several muscles running in different directions and, ideally, some bone.

The trick to cooking any meat in liquid is not boiling it. You should bring it just to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer it for three — four hours Boiling meat makes it tough and the goal in braising is to make it tender. The second trick is the meat should only be half covered. This means half of it roasts, albeit in steam (the pot should be covered), above the liquid heightening the flavor. I usually turn whatever I'm braising over several times during cooking. The last trick is that, although you can braise on the stove top, if you're not using a crock pot it's best to braise in a 250 degree oven. This is a gentler cooking technique than using the stove top and applies heat to the top portion to achieve the roasting effect in the last trick.

The best cuts for braising have several muscles running in different directions and, ideally, some bone. The connective tissue between the muscles melts and adds richness to the sauce. It also adds gelatin as do the bones, which increases the body of the sauce.

So, given the above, here are some of my favorite braising recipes. Some call for oven temperatures above 275 degrees, but I would reduce the temp and increase the time by at least 30 minutes. You can also make all of these in a crock pot, but you'll have to make the conversion yourself.

Beef Daube: French daubes are a perfect example of a peasant dish that deserves a place of honor. These are stews or braises where the meat is typically marinated in wine with aromatics for 12 to 48 hours before being gently cooked in the marinade. As I mentioned above, the Canard au Vin mimics this method.

Beef Carbonade: Carbonade is a Belgian with a Spanish names that means grilled — talk about an identity crisis. Nevertheless it's amazingly good. The Belgian and Irish cuisines make the most use of beer in dishes - surprisingly, the Germans seldom cook with beer, they figure beer is for drinking. But I'm with the Belgians and Irish: Beer is a great in food.

Braised Lamb Shanks: I hadn't anticipated having to smell these shanks cooking for so long. I expected an initial burst of aroma during the browning phase, followed by a sharp decline, and then a gradual building of aroma until it was ready. This is fair. This is predictable. But no the initial smell spike was higher and more pronounced than I expected (Was it the tomato paste I added to the browning vegetables? The juniper berries that opened new scent avenues?) and the decline far less after going into the oven. Simply not fair - but they sure were good.

Lamb Tagine with Figs and Prunes: Tagine, the cooking vessel and dish, are Moroccan — meaning Arabic — meaning the spices can be surprising to Western palates. Mostly because Arabs use a lot of spices we've come to associate with sweet dishes: cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, ginger… Our Western association isn't unreasonable, these spices do indeed complement sweet flavors, but Arab cuisine often adds sweet tastes to savory dishes and so it's not unusual to find fruit or honey paired with chicken and accented with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Milk-braised Pork: I used a pork loin in this case because that's what I had on hand. But since then I've made it using a Boston Butt (shoulder) roast and it's better because the Butt has connective tissue, bone, and is pretty damned cheap. I've also futzed with the recipe adding onions and carrots and herbs. Nope. Don’t do it. Keep it dead simple. You cannot make this better, all you can do is make it different.

Cuban Braised Pork: I developed this recipe (from a bunch of examples) in order to make a sandwich. I kid you not. I marinated a pork shoulder (boneless because I wanted to slice it) for 24 hours, then cooked it for three hours, and made bread just to experience a Cubano — the famous sandwich from Miami. I like sandwiches. But the roast isn't only good in a Cuban sandwich. I've also pulled it apart And served on rice drizzled with the sauce.

Curried Chicken: Chicken is not innately tough, in fact the breast is innately tender, consequently it doesn't need to be cooked as long as beef, lamb, or pork and chicken breasts aren't a particularly good choice for braising. But chicken thighs and legs can stand the longer, slower cooking and get much better. This curry recipe gently simmers thighs for and hour and half and during that time the legs will make their own sauce as if by magic.

Chicken Parpikas: Paprikas is one of my favorite chicken dishes, again thighs are chosen for their flavor and ability to stand up to 90 minutes of cooking. I've been berated for including mushrooms in my version, as well as dill. But I've run across other recipes calling for one or the other, and besides, it's a peasant dish. That means that as long as you keep to the spirit of the dish pretty much anything goes. In this case the spirit is a rich paprika-flavored sauce that's delicious on noodles or even rice.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | braise | main dish