Oxtail stew

It happens that guests are invited to one dish, for example, dumplings or pilaf. This is exactly how you can gather friends for a sumptuous stew. A seasonal dish, just right for cold days, aromatic and surprisingly tasty.

Oxtail stew

Oxtail stew - a very warming dish. It is good to serve pasta with it, and use the tails themselves as a sauce. It is recommended to take pasta rigatoni - rigatoni(“sliced”, “grooved”), this is a short and thick paste. And, without sparing, sprinkle grated Parmesan on top.

BY THE WAY: about oil. I used ghee, although the recipe called for lard, but this dish can be made with olive oil. Fry the tails in olive oil, add garlic, finely chopped hot chili pepper (peperoncino), tomato puree, white wine and simmer. Well, vegetables, of course.

Oxtail stew

OX TAIL RAGU RECIPE

cooking time: 3 hours

NECESSARY:

1.5 kg oxtails
50 g ghee
2 carrots
500 g stalked celery
2 bunches of parsley
250 ml dry white wine
3 tbsp. l. tomato paste
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
Ground chili pepper
Pinch of cinnamon
Salt, freshly ground black pepper

HOW TO COOK:

1. Cut the oxtails into vertebrae and rinse with water. Boil 1.5 liters of salted water, add the tails and cook for 10 minutes. Remove the tails from the pan.

2. Chop 1 bunch of parsley and garlic.

3. Cut carrots and onions into small cubes. Mix vegetables.

4. Melt ghee in a frying pan, add oxtails and fry on all sides. Transfer to a saucepan.

5. In the same frying pan, stir-fry the vegetable mixture.

Fry the vegetable mixture.

6. Pour in 125 ml of wine, evaporate half over high heat. Reduce heat, pour in the remaining wine, salt and pepper.

7. Stir tomato paste in very hot water and add to meat. The water should cover all the meat.

8. Cover the saucepan with a lid and simmer the tails over medium heat for about 3 hours.

Simmer the tails over medium heat for 3 hours

9. Meanwhile, wash the celery, cut off the greens and set aside. Chop the stems and add to the roasting pan after 2 hours from the start of stewing. Simmer everything together for another 1 hour.

Thick, rich beef tail soup is a traditional Spanish dish. It is easy to prepare, but not quick - the process will take quite some time, at least an hour, or even an hour and a half, depending on the maturity of the tails. The dish can be classified as budget, because the tails are inexpensive.

The tail part of the meat, as it turned out, is very tasty, the main thing is to cook it correctly. The tails make excellent strong jellied meats, as they contain a lot of jelly particles. Tails are stewed with wine or beer. And here is the soup. Beef tail soup, as it is prepared in Spain.

I’ll add a few tips here (they are further down in the text of the recipe).

1. Be sure to skim any fat from the surface of the soup.
2. The more you fry the meat, the tastier the soup will be, and the less fat there will be.
3. Add a little sugar to neutralize the sour taste of the tomato paste.
4. Always fry the tomato paste, then its taste is revealed brighter in the dish.

Ingredients

• beef tails 1 kg
• onion 1 pc.
• medium carrots 1 pc.
• celery root 100 g
• garlic 1 clove
• ginger 5 g
• potatoes 3 pcs.
• tomato sauce 2 tbsp. l.
• tomato paste 3 tbsp. l.
• corn starch 1-2 tsp.
• spices for meat 1 tbsp.
• onion 1 pc.
• frying oil
• chili pepper, salt to taste

How to make beef tail soup

1. Rinse the beef tails under running cold water and cut them into several pieces along the cartilages.
   
   
2. Heat a few drops of vegetable oil in a deep saucepan, place the tails in it and fry.
   
3. The longer you fry the meat (within reason, of course), the more flavorful the soup will be. It is also important that excess fat will be fried, which is useless and which is best removed during cooking.
   
4. While the meat is cooking, wash the vegetables and cut them into any uniform shape - I cut them into small cubes.
   
5. Place the fried tails on a cutting board.
   
6. Place all the vegetables in the same saucepan where they were fried and sauté for 5-10 minutes.
   
7. Add a mixture of spices (I used the ready-made mixture “For Meat”, which includes suneli hops).
   
8. Pour in the sauce and tomato paste and fry for a few minutes.
   Advice. Always fry tomato paste, then it will reveal its flavor more clearly in the dish.
   
9. Now return the tails to the vegetables.
   
10. Fill everything with water from a just boiled kettle and cook over low heat. Don't forget to remove fat from the surface of the soup with a spoon.
    
11. When the meat on the tails becomes soft (after 1-1.5 hours), add medium-sized chopped potatoes to the soup. Add salt and a little sugar - this is what Spanish chefs advise to neutralize the sour taste of tomato paste.
    
12. The readiness of the soup is determined by the softness of the meat. Ideally when it comes away from the bones.
    
13. Remove the tails from the pan and separate the meat from the bones.
    
14. If the soup is not thick enough, mix the starch with two tablespoons of cold water in a small bowl, and then pour into the soup, stirring well with a spoon. Another way to thicken the soup is to add a few tablespoons of rice, which should be added about 15 minutes before the end of cooking.
    Return the meat to the soup, stir and turn off the heat. Cover the saucepan with a lid and let the soup simmer for 10 minutes.
    

Serve beef tail soup hot, don't forget to sprinkle it with fresh herbs.

See also:
Florentine tripe
Beshbarmak with testes

To begin with, let's try to answer the question: what can be exquisite in offal, which, of course, includes beef tails? Well, it largely depends on how and with what you cook them. But those who have had the opportunity to try this, I’m not afraid of this word, delicacy, will not let you lie: the meat on the tails is tender, literally melting in the mouth, thanks to the high content of joint gelatin. There are only two "buts" in the idea of ​​​​beef tails. The first is where to get them. And secondly, how to actually use them in finished form.

With the first, everything is simple if this by-product does not end up on collective farm markets. Farm products delivered to your home is now a very common and affordable service that easily solves the problem of tailings. As for the second “but”, only aristocrats will have to give up “tail delights”: here it is difficult to get by with a knife and fork because of the bones. Therefore, when tasting this dish, you will have to partially help yourself with your hands, holding wet wipes under the same hands. But these “inconveniences” are almost nothing compared to the vivid sensations of color and taste that the “sacred plant” of celery, tomatoes and a bit of pureed orange impart to the tails. Shall we try? Then let's get to work. For a couple of kilograms of beef tails (this is 2-3 full servings), take:
1. 50-70 grams of good lard (preferably lamb).
2. One medium celery root (300-400 grams)
3. Onion head
4 3-4 cloves garlic
5. Either 5-6 medium ripe tomatoes, from which the skin has been removed, or ready-made tomato puree - approximately 500 grams.
6. Medium orange.
7.50 grams of vegetable oil
8. A good pinch of freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste.

Rinse the tails well, cut off excess fat at the base and cut it along the joints (I do not recommend chopping it under any circumstances due to the inevitable appearance of small bones).

Set the tail pieces aside and cut the lard into arbitrary pieces for the cracklings. In general, it is always advisable to fry such things as offal in pure lard - it is much more appetizing and tastier. Chopped lard can be melted in a deep frying pan, kettle or wok. There should be enough space, taking into account the fact that later we will put not only tails and vegetables in the dish, but also pour in water.

As soon as the cracklings are thoroughly melted, you can remove them and start frying the tails themselves with the addition of a pinch or two of salt.

It is advisable to fry until lightly browned - this is the basis for the color both for the sauce and for the pieces themselves.

Following the onion is celery root, cut into thin strips with the addition of freshly ground black pepper - not so much for flavor, but for subsequent spiciness. The quality of cutting celery root in the future will largely determine not only the taste of the sauce, but also its consistency, since, given the duration of stewing beef tails, celery will play, among other things, the role of a thickener.

If fresh tomatoes are used, they will need to be peeled and finely chopped, placing the “slices” in a deep bowl and lightly salting them so that the juice is released abundantly - it will then need to be added to the tails along with the tomatoes. Tomatoes canned in their own juice or ready-made, pureed tomatoes, usually sold already in packages, are very good. The tomato part should be added to the tails after the celery has softened.

And again, you need to mix everything, ensuring that the stewing in the tomato juice occurs evenly, almost until the juice itself has completely evaporated. After which you should pour hot water into the bowl so that it only slightly covers the frying, and add chopped orange pulp randomly (to puree). It perfectly balances the acidity of tomatoes, adding its own notes to the taste of the future sauce.

Finally, the main stew is the longest process in preparing this delicacy. It should take place at a very low simmer for at least two to two and a half hours, during which from time to time you will not only have to stir the contents of the dish so that something does not burn, but also add hot water to maintain the required level of moisture in the sauce. And only at the final stage, when tasting the meat demonstrates its complete readiness, can the sauce be finally seasoned with salt and seasoned with freshly ground black pepper.

In some cases, fried rice is served with ready-made beef tails (in fact, it is dry fried in a small amount of oil, and brought to readiness with the help of water). But since this dish is not for princesses and you can forget about aristocratic manners for a while, the sauce is good when you dip toast in it. More specifically, toast tastes good when dipped in sauce.

Published by author

I also know a few recipes for oxtail soup, but I don’t like it too much.

I would be glad to try something new.

If anyone knows an interesting recipe, my gratitude will be limitless within reason...

A couple of preliminary notes. When purchasing a cut tail, you should pay attention to the fact that it should be cut at the junction of the vertebrae. In your opinion, excess fat can be removed, but do not be too zealous.

The cooking technology is simple, it actually includes two stages: preparing vegetables (preliminary stewing in their own juice) and adding and subsequent long stewing (at least 2 hours) of pieces of tail in vegetable sauce.

A large, thick-walled saucepan is required!

Argentinian oxtail recipe

Ingredients: 750 gr. oxtails, 3 tbsp fat, 3-4 coarsely chopped onions, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 carrot, 1 bay leaf, 3 pcs. cloves, 1 incomplete tsp. dried thyme, 1/4 l red wine, pepper, salt, 1 tsp. sugar, 1 lemon, 1 tbsp. flour.

Cut the tails into pieces and fry heavily in 2 tbsp. spoons of fat. Add finely chopped onions and garlic, grated carrots, bay leaves, cloves, thyme and salt. Simmer the meat over low heat, adding water from time to time. Season with salt and pepper, burnt sugar, lemon juice and zest. Continue simmering for another 10 minutes. Pass the sauce through a sieve.

Prepare dark gravy from the remaining fat and flour. Mix it with the juice released during stewing and red wine. Place the tail pieces into the prepared gravy and lightly boil again.

The dish can be served with boiled rice or potatoes.

Recipe from I. Lazerson from the book DISHES FROM BY-PRODUCTS

vkusninka.com

It is so established by nature that different cuts of meat are best suited for different dishes. Some things should be boiled, some things should definitely be fried, and some things reveal their flavor during slow, leisurely simmering. Ox (or beef) tail is a product that can scare away particularly impressionable eaters, but after trying the tender meat that literally melts in your mouth, you will realize that you have almost deprived yourself of a pleasure that you did not even suspect. One of the advantages of this dish is that the tail is one of the cheapest cuts, and there is enough meat for everyone.

Braised beef tail

4 servings

1 beef tail (800-1000 g)
1 stalk of celery
1 carrot
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
2 cloves
4 black peppercorns
800 g tomatoes in their own juice
olive oil
a couple of thyme sprigs
salt
pepper

When buying a tail, ask the butcher to cut it into segments about 5 cm long. Place the meat in a pan, pour boiling water over it and cover with a lid. After 10 minutes, drain the water and return the meat to the pan along with coarsely chopped celery, carrots and onions (stick a clove in the last couple), 2 cloves of garlic, bay leaf and black pepper. Shake the pan, fill with cold water so that it just covers the food, and cook over low heat for 2.5-3 hours, periodically removing the foam. After straining, discard the broth - it will come in handy! – and remove the meat from the bones. This will be very easy to do.

Heat a little olive oil in a large saucepan, quickly fry 2 chopped garlic cloves in it, add the tomatoes in their own juice, peeled and chopped, and pieces of meat. Add thyme leaves, season lightly with ground black pepper, and simmer for another 1.5-2 hours over low heat, adding a little water if the sauce thickens completely. At the end of cooking, taste the meat - it should be very soft and tender, otherwise you need to simmer longer - season with salt and black pepper and remove the saucepan from the heat. Oxtail ragu can be served with any of the usual side dishes, or can be used as a sauce for pasta or gnocchi. This is exactly what I will do in the recipe that will follow immediately after this one.

Oxtail "Cookbook of Spain"

A series of recipes for Spanish cuisine "Cookbook of Spain" more details:

"The oxtail does not tolerate fuss"

Umberto Rocca ("The Stork") on oxtails

When is a bull's tail cut off?

Of course, they cut it off from the carcass when it is taken apart. The tails arrive to us chilled and already without skin. Moreover, these are not the entire tails, but their front part, which is closest to the body.

Do you get oxtails from Europe?

We cook with local beef. Yes, no extra effort is needed here. Oxtails are not elegant, but simply hearty and delicious food. In the classic version, meat from oxtails is eaten with hands, gnawing the meat from the bones. In Italy they are prepared in almost every restaurant, and in Spain they even use the tails of bulls killed in bullfights, the dish is called rabo di toro, this is also a classic. In our restaurant, the meat is removed from the bone, and the tails are served with a special red sauce with spinach. This is not exactly a dish for the poor, but it is very affordable and is considered popular in Mediterranean countries. Although it takes a very long time to cook.

How much meat is on the tail and what are its properties?

Once they sent me the tails of young calves - I had to send them away. It turned out that it is unprofitable to cook - and precisely because there is only 30 percent meat in the oxtail. The rest is good tubular bone, nerves and tendons. Imagine how many veal tails would have to be prepared for a hungry adult... The meat has all the properties of beef: it has iron and is good for the blood, and the sticky broth made from meat on the bone is good for the body. The main benefit is that you ate something tasty - and that makes you happy!

Do I need to marinate oxtails?

But of course! I mentioned that while it's affordable, oxtails require a lot of time. But first, some good advice: in order to eat properly, you need to prepare a very large pan, and buy about five kilograms of meat. Cut the tails into eight-centimeter slices and throw them into running cold water - and you can forget about them for a day. Water will finally clean the surfaces of the meat and free it from blood, the pieces will become denser. Then we take them out of the water and fill them with red wine. You will need a lot of wine - but during these 12 hours it will absorb all harmful substances, give the meat tartness and sourness, and also a lilac tint. Then add salt and pepper and put the tails in the oven at 250 degrees for 10 minutes and bake to highlight the taste of the meat. At the same time, throw vegetables into a pan of water in a ratio of one to two parts of meat - in our case, 2.5 kilograms: carrots, onions, celery stalks. And here are the spices: thyme, cloves, bay leaf, juniper, a little olive oil. Carrots and onions add sweetness to the broth. When the vegetables are already half ready, throw the meat into the broth and prepare to skim the foam several times. When the water has evaporated greatly, add more red wine. In total, for 5 kilograms of meat, you will need two liters of wine and six liters of water. And the meat itself should be cooked for at least five hours. Then we take out the meat, remove it from the bone with our hands and tear the meat into fibers.

Shall we use broth?

Necessarily. Now, let’s get on with it while the meat, removed from the bone and separated into fibers, cools. Over low heat, adjust the taste of the meat broth with vegetables using salt and pepper. You can’t add too much salt at once - the sauce will thicken, and if you add too much salt, that’s the end of it. That’s why we always add a pinch of salt. We take out the spices that we can notice in the cloudy and very rich broth. Gently wipe the remaining contents. And evaporate a little more. Now let's add some dark chocolate...

Do you put chocolate in a sauce based on broth and vegetables?!

And who said that this cannot be done? Let's put a little, 30 grams per kilogram of sauce. Actually, the version of the sauce “with chocolate” is classic Spanish, and without chocolate is Italian. Nothing spicy, it has a sweet and sour, complex taste, and the shades that the wine gave it are very calm and to the point. I would never imagine any kind of mustard on oxtail cutlets. Red sauce only, with or without chocolate...

What do we do with the meat removed from the tail?

After cooling the fibers, we form them into patties the size of an egg. If the meat is not sticky enough, roll the cutlet in egg and flour. And then deep fry for a few seconds until the flour is browned. We serve this dish like this: in the center of the plate we place spinach, steamed with butter, next to it are three meat balls, as if we glaze them with our red sauce, and on top of the spinach we put some mashed potatoes and pickled peppers.

In general, having tried it once in Spain, it became clear that this is a very suitable dish.

I’m not writing a recipe, there are plenty of them on the internet (stewed oxtail), choose according to your taste.
For garnish - potatoes fried in a cauldron on the fat tail with onions and carrots.

“... a bullfight is perhaps the greatest, most vital and poetic wealth of Spain... This is a true drama, looking at which the Spaniard sheds his most sincere tears and experiences the deepest sorrow”
Gabriel Garcia Lorca

When you hear the word Spain, what are the first associations that arise? Most often this is either a flamenco dancer or a brave bullfighter who has come out to duel with a bull. But if a bullfighter has every chance of leaving the arena alive, after all, we are talking about professionals who have been studying the habits of a wild animal for years, then the bull’s chances are almost zero.

The main characters of the bullfight are the bull himself, the picador, the bullfighter, the banderillero, and the matador. The fight begins with a picador - a rider with a pike who angers the bull. Then the bullfighter takes over. His goal is to tease the bull with a red cloak. The banderillero thrusts banderillas into the bull - small spears with multi-colored ribbons. The matador gets the most difficult and honorable thing - to kill a bull with a blow of a sword.

Each act of bullfighting has its own strict order. At the tenth minute of the third act the bull must be killed. If this does not happen, the matador receives a warning. At the twelfth minute, the loser will receive a second warning, which will inevitably affect his future reputation. After a quarter of an hour, the disgraced matador is deprived of the right to finish the fight. He is kicked out of the arena in disgrace, and he may never return there.

Bullfighting trophies are the ears and tail of a killed bull. The dish Rabo de Toro (stewed oxtail) is considered one of the most famous dishes in Andalusian cuisine and one of the most beloved Spanish delicacies among tourists. Especially in the traditional cuisine of Cordoba. The cuisine of this region is characterized by a skillful combination of vegetables with meat or fish. And it's all seasoned with wonderful golden olive oil. This sounds promising, so let's start cooking right away!

Preparation:

First you need to find a suitable oxtail. In Spain, suitable bovine meat is not sold in the first butcher shop you come across; these are mainly shops that are located near the arena and the meat is only available there for a few days after the bullfight. Well, I had to take the word of the butcher at the market that this bull's tail was exactly what I needed.

What will we cook from (I didn’t take a photo of nutmeg and saffron, I only thought of putting them in later, and, oddly enough, I didn’t find leek in any supermarket)

Cut the tail into pieces

You need to cut along the cartilages; they can be easily felt in the tail.

Salt, pepper and add wine vinegar to the meat so that it marinates while we make the sauce. Don't forget to stir occasionally.

Coarsely chop the vegetables.

I cooked in a wok (which I’m very used to), but you can also cook in a saucepan.
Pour more olive oil into the bottom, roll the meat in flour

And fry it in oil until golden brown. Remove the meat and set it aside

And in the same oil, fry the onion until almost transparent,

Then add garlic and carrots cut into large slices, simmer under the lid until the carrots can be pierced with a skewer,

Then add bell pepper (I left 6 very large pieces of pepper for serving) and simmer for another 10 minutes over low heat.

And tomatoes, and simmer for another 2 minutes

Then add spices and simmer a little more. A little bit.

Take out the vegetables, let them cool and blend everything (except the bay leaf) with a blender until smooth (but not too thoroughly, a few large pieces of vegetables will only decorate the sauce when serving).

We put the meat in a baking dish, but you can also stew it in a saucepan on the stove, not only in the oven

We also put chopped vegetables, bay leaves there,

Add wine and water until the sauce covers or almost covers the meat.

Simmer at 150 C for a very long time. Oxtail is stewed for several hours, because during the fight a lot of adrenaline enters the animal’s bloodstream and this makes the meat tough. The previous owner of the very hard tail that I inherited apparently honestly earned his venerable age, having defeated many brave bullfighters in a huge number of tournaments, so the meat was stewed for a very long time, 3 and a half hours, if not more, until it began to disintegrate. After the meat is ready, I take it out and bake the bell pepper pieces in the same sauce for another 15 minutes for serving. It is better to serve the next day, when the meat is well soaked in the sauce.
This dish can be either an appetizer or a full second course. In Spain it is usually served with potatoes. For example, Rabo de toro served with Patatas Paja (straw potatoes) makes a complete main course.

The great Spanish poet Gabriel Garcia Lorca said that anyone who does not understand bullfighting will not understand the soul of a Spaniard. “What would happen to the Spanish spring, to our blood, to our language, if the dramatic clarinets of bullfighting stopped sounding?” Perhaps there is a certain amount of exaggeration in his words, but the first association that arises in our heads when we pronounce the word “Spain” is connected precisely with bullfighting.

In the Middle Ages, fighting with bulls was the entertainment of the aristocracy, and only in the 18th century did bullfighting become a popular spectacle. The first professional bullfighter was Francisco Romero, a carpenter from Ronda, and his grandson Pedro Romero was the founder of modern bullfighting. In the 18th and 19th centuries throughout Spain, most cities had their own plazas de torros (bullfighting rings), open circular areas.

At the hour of bullfighting, the streets of Spanish cities are empty. Both young and old are rushing home to watch their televisions. For the sake of this spectacle, which has overshadowed football, movies, and theater, people leave all their affairs for a while. Almost every child here knows the names of the matadors by heart. Children in every country have their favorite games, and little Spaniards play bullfighting: “... you won’t find a boy in Spain who wouldn’t dream of becoming a matador,” said the famous Spanish matador Paco Camino

We can talk for a long time about the fact that bullfighting is barbarism, public murder. Many animal rights activists call bullfighters butchers, but the Spaniards themselves consider it an art and call it tauromaquia (tauromachy) - the art of bullfighting. They interpret bullfighting as a struggle between two principles: brute strength and intelligence. The bull, one way or another, awaits death, but in the slaughterhouse he dies, not even understanding what happened, and in the arena he awaits a worthy end to his life, death in the battle for which he was born.

A real bullfighter is a high-class artist who plays in a drama on the theme of life and death.

Since the beginning of 2012, after numerous protests by animal rights activists, bullfighting has been officially banned in Catalonia. So, in 2011, a group of naked activists made a figure of a dying bull from their bodies in the central square of the city. As a result, the Catalan parliament was forced to vote to ban “bloody battles.”
The last celebration of the confrontation between man and bull in the history of Catalonia took place at the legendary Barcelona Arena “Monumental” - the Bullfighting Colosseum, built 100 years ago. Farewell to bullfighting caused a huge stir in Barcelona. Tickets with a nominal value of 100-150 euros were sold by resellers for 800-1500 euros