Beef Oxtail Stew

Soup season's in full effect and here's another recipe. You know what time it is. It's your boy Hammer Bong and welcome to Hammer Time Cooking. On today's episode, I'm going to teach you my version of a classic beef oxtail stew. Stay tuned and let's get cooking. Now let's start off with our proteins today. We got three pounds of oxtail and one pound of chuck roast beef. We'll begin seasoning our beef with some salt and pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. So throughout this whole process, we're going to add layers and layers of flavor. So adding the garlic and onion powder is just the first step of adding that. So one of my few tricks of making the meat nice and tender is adding some cornstarch. So the cornstarch is going to actually tenderize the meat and it gets it nice and soft. By adding some flour, we're going to help brown the meat and it's going to give some color and texture to our stew. So by adding the cornstarch and flour, it's going to make our stew nice and thick. So that's what makes it different between a soup and a stew. We'll repeat the same process for our oxtail. In a stock pot, we're going to add two tablespoons of olive oil and we'll add in our oxtail. We want to make sure the meat has room to breathe and it can brown properly. If not, you're going to steam the beef and then it's just going to turn gray and it's not as pretty. You see that? So we're adding nice color and texture to it and we want to make sure we're getting all the sides to this too. By searing the meat, it captures all of that juice inside the meat and it stays there. So when you bite into it, it's still tender and juicy. Now that's how you know if you've cooked oxtail properly. When you bite into it, it's melt in your mouth and you just feel a little woohoo. You know what I mean? With the residual oil that's left in the pot, we'll add in our mirepoix. Now this simply consists of carrots, onion, and celery. So you can finely dice your mirepoix or make it chunky monkey, but that's clearly up to you. The important part is making sure we add flavor and we season the meat. We'll allow the veggies to cook and then we're going to add some garlic. Just like the zuppa toscano recipe, we don't want to add the garlic at the same time as the veggies. Reason being, we don't want the garlic to burn. Once the garlic starts cooking, we'll add my favorite herb, some thyme. Now you can either add dried thyme or fresh thyme, but for me, I feel fresh is best. Next, we'll add two tablespoons of tomato paste. So tomato paste is a nice concentration of tomatoes, but we want to make sure we cook it down properly. That way, it doesn't have like an off-put tart flavor. Next, we'll add one can of diced tomatoes to deglaze our mirepoix and tomato base. Here, I have a bottle of motif. It's an inexpensive cabernet and anytime you cook with alcohol, you don't need anything too expensive. The purpose of the wine is to bring acid into this dish. So we're going to cook out the alcohol and what's left over is the fruitiness and sweetness from the wine. If you're not a fan of alcohol, you can totally omit this. Next, we'll add two cups of beef stock or beef broth. Now let's turn up the heat and let's get this stock to a boil. Once we have our stock at a boil, we can start adding in our proteins. We want to make sure the meat's fully submerged underneath that cooking liquid. That way, it has a chance to get nice and tender. Now cover up the pot and let it simmer for two and a half hours. While we let the stew do its thing, we're going to prep some of our veggies. So right here, I got some potatoes and some mushroom. We're just going to cut the mushrooms in half and set them aside. So we have about an hour left of cooking time for our stew. So we're going to add three diced russet potatoes. We want to let the potatoes get nice and soft and tender, but not where it's all mashed up. And with 20 minutes of our cook left, we're going to add our mushrooms. Allow the mushrooms to cook with the top off and here we go. Today, I'm serving my oxtail stew on a plate of mashed potatoes. Now you can put it on a bed of rice and I present to you my oxtail stew. I really hope you give this recipe a try. Now don't forget to hammer that like button, share it with your friends, leave a comment. Thank you very much and I'll see you again next time.