- Braising steak
Preparation
Beat the steaks, add salt and pepper, fry them quickly in hot oil on both sides and stack them in a pan like tiles.
Fry the bacon cut into strips and the thinly sliced onions in the remaining fat, put everything off with the white wine, add the tomato paste, garlic and paprika, pour over the brown stock, and boil with the lid on.
Just before the steaks become tender, add the crispy peperonata, wait 5 minutes, and season.
Ingredients and doses for 4 people
- 4beef steak of 180g each
- 30 g of olive oil
- 80 g of onions
- 80 g of speck
- 30 cl of brown base (or water)
- 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon of paprika
- 1 clove of crushed garlic
- 10 cl of white wine
- salt
- pepper
Main ingredient
- Beef
- Cooking the braised beef
How to make braised beef
Prepare the traditional braised, beef, it is not difficult but long and laborious, for this is a second plate suitable for feast days or on a Sunday or those in which it has time to follow all the stages of preparation of the recipe and the slow cooking of meat if you want to bring to the table a satisfying, refined dish with a unique taste. Usually, when you cook braised meat, you make it in large quantities, because with the braised meat and its tasty sauce you can season pasta or stuff ravioli.
Ingredients for For 4 people
- 750 grams beef hat of the priest
- 1 glass red wine
- 300 grams peeled tomatoes in tin with liquid
- 30 grams butter
- 4 spoons extra virgin olive oil
- 150 grams lard or bacon
- to taste broth
- 1onion
- 1carrot
- 2celery ribs
- to tasty leek
- 1 wedge garlic
- 2 leaves laurel
- to taste salt
- to taste thyme
- to taste parsley
Step by Step
1) If you have chosen a piece of meat with little fat for your braised meat, use the larding technique so that it acquires greater flavor and softness.
Put the chosen piece of meat on the cutting board and with the special tool, in which you have inserted the strip of lard or bacon, pierce the piece of meat at regular intervals in the direction of the fibers.
The strips of fat must be longer than the thickness of the meat; they must be trimmed with a knife so that they protrude at the sides by about 2.5 cm. If you do not have the utensil, cut the meat with a thin knife and insert the “lardelli” into the cuts.
2) Sprinkle the surface of the meat with a thin layer of flour, spread it with your hands so as to cover it well, turn it, and do the same on the other side and along the edges.
3) Place the piece of meat in a saucepan that contains it almost in size, in which you have put 3-4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and 30 g of butter.
Do it brown for about 15 minutes, turning the meat on all sides Then add the carrot, onion and celery rib, cut into cubes, the small leek cut into rings, the minced clove of garlic and 1 bunch garnished with herbs (parsley, bay leaf and thyme).
4) First add the glass of red wine that you will evaporate to the meat, then the well-drained and blended peeled tomatoes. Pour 2 ladles of hot broth, season with pepper and hermetically cover the container.
Cook the braised meat for about 2-3 hours, always keeping the heat very low and checking that the sauce does not dry out too much: in this case, add a little more hot broth. The liquid must never boil, otherwise the meat will harden too much.
The cooking time of the braised meat depends on the type of meat chosen, on how fibrous and hard the meat is. In some cases, for cuts of third category meat, which are rather hard, cooking lasts up to 6-8 hours.
Add salt only after cooking. Then turn off the heat when the braised beef is ready and let it cool in the pot for at least 30 minutes so that it settles and cools. Serve the sliced meat with its gravy.
The tips and secrets for cooking braised beef
The ideal recipients for braising are cast iron, earthenware or stainless steel casseroles. The important thing is that it is slightly larger than the piece of meat, so that it is well immersed in the liquid in which it is to cook.
The seasoning plays a fundamental part in cooking braised meat, because it serves to keep the meat soft and tasty. At the end of cooking, you can eliminate the grease that rises to the surface to make the sauce lighter. Remove the meat, pass a spoon just below the surface of the sauce and collect the layer of fat.
The braised meat must be sliced cold. Place the meat on a cut and hold it firmly with your hands, grabbing the whole piece. At this point, slice the meat in the direction of the grain, with the help of a knife with a sharp and thin blade (even better if electric). Then obtain slices that have a thickness of about 5 mm.
