The Most Underrated Cut of Beef You'll Ever Make at Home

Today, we're making Asabuko, a classic comfort food dish with a modern twist. If you don't know what Asabuko is, it's a beef shank that comes on the bone with the bone marrow and everything. It's absolutely packed with flavor, delicious, and something a lot of people have never had before. So today, we're going to make it happen. Meet me in the kitchen, let's make it happen. First things first, let's talk about the beef shank. I got these from Costco, four and a half pounds for about 25 bucks, really great price, inexpensive cut of meat here. We're going to use three of these. We got classic flavors with the mirepoix, onion, celery, carrots. We got garlic, tomato paste. We have some diced tomatoes with some green chilies to add a little spice, a little extra flavor component, some fresh herbs, some red wine. Again, this is a very classic dish, but I'm going to put a few modern twists on it to make it my own. If you've never had Asabuko, you're in for a treat. All right guys, so one of the techniques that I like to use with anything that I'm braising, whether it's short ribs or Asabuko like we're doing today, I want to do a salt brine. I'm going to hit it heavily with some kosher salt, pop that in the refrigerator for at least two to three hours. If you can do 24 hours, that'll be even better, but at least a couple hours. Salt brine, pop it in the fridge. Next up, it's time to prep our mirepoix. Mirepoix is just basically a chef-y term for carrots, celery, and onions. It's pretty foundational in a lot of French braising recipes, so we're going to use it today. It still works. It's been around for forever for a reason. Great traditional flavor profile. We're going to roughly chop our onion, roughly chop our carrots, and then roughly chop the celery. I'm going to throw some garlic in the mix as well because why the hell not? Garlic is great in this recipe. So one whole head of garlic, we're just going to cut the end piece off and just put the whole thing in there. Alright people, next up, very important right here, we got to get a good sear on this beef. So to a hot skillet, I'm going to add enough avocado oil to coat the bottom of the skillet and make sure it gets nice and hot. Right when it starts to smoke, that's when you know it's time to go into the skillet with the beef. So we also salt brine this. If you want to pat it with a paper towel to make sure you get any excess moisture off, that's a good pro tip right there because the drier it is when it goes into the skillet, the better the crust is going to develop. Now like I said, this is a traditional dish, but we're not necessarily making it in the traditional way. Now traditionally, you would coat this in a light layer of flour, sear it, and then that flour is going to help thicken up the sauce. In my opinion, I find that you have a little less control over the viscosity or the thickness of the sauce if you do it that way. So I like to skip the flour completely, sear it nice and hard like I would a short rib, then remove it, and then if I want to thicken up the sauce at the end, I have the ability to do that and tweak it as needed. Alright guys, once we have everything seared to perfection, we're going to remove the beef and then add in our mirepoix plus garlic. So we killed the heat that way we don't splatter ourselves with hot oil. Going in with the onions, the garlic, the carrots, the celery, all that good stuff. Then we turn the heat back on once we get the veggies in there safely. Give this a good mix and just allow these to kind of caramelize just a little bit. We're also going to add some tomato paste, those diced tomatoes that we talked about. Really good quality beef stock or bone broth. You really want to get those flavors to complement the collagen that's going to come out of the bone marrow as this braises low and slow. We're going to cook this in the oven at 325 for about three to three and a half hours or until the meat is fork tender. You could also do this in a pressure cooker for about an hour as well. You could also braise it on the stovetop on low for about three and a half hours. So you got a few options as to how you want to cook this. I'm going in the oven today just because it's you know in my opinion pretty easy other than pressure cookers probably a little easier because it's faster if you know how to work a pressure cooker. But everybody knows how to work an oven so that's what we're going with today. Get the veggies in there. We're going to season this with some AP seasoning. Can't forget that garlic. We're going to add the tomato paste. We're going to deglaze with dry red wine. Then add in the diced tomatoes in the beef broth. Add our asabuco back to the braising liquid. Cover it with a lid. Pop it in the oven at 325. All right guys we're serving up this asabuco with some delicious creamy mashed potatoes. Typically you would serve this over risotto or even polenta but I like it with the mashed potatoes because mashed potatoes are awesome. We're going to use about two cups of heavy cream and a half a stick of Kerrygold grass-fed butter. We're going to add some rosemary. You got some thyme if you have it just to get some herb flavor in there. You got some garlic cloves if you want. We're going to add a little bit of garlic paste to this and then we're going to season it up. Allow this to steep and kind of the flavors to come together and infuse the flavor into the cream. We're going to strain this butter and cream mixture into our potatoes as we mash them. Season to taste and that is going to be the bed for this delicious asabuco to rest on. All right guys right at three hours the asabuco is absolutely beautiful. Tender, it's brown, looks amazing. We went ahead and strained off the braising liquid which we're going to reduce down and make our sauce. You can simmer this on medium low for about 30 minutes to really reduce it down and concentrate it or if you're impatient like me you can reduce it a little bit and then add a slurry which is cornstarch and water. Whisk that together. Bring this up to a boil. Add that slurry. That will thicken up the sauce pretty rapidly. Season to taste. Turn the heat down and you got yourself a beautiful sauce that's going to pair nicely with these mashed potatoes. I'm going to go in with our slurry. Add a little bit at a time because it will get thick pretty quickly on you and then right at the end just season to taste. I already tasted it. I don't think it's going to need much maybe a pinch of salt and pepper but this slurry is going to thicken it up nice and quick. All right people we're going to plate this up over the mashed potatoes with that delicious sauce that we made. A little micro greens for garnish. This is the part where I say brace yourself for a trademark bunny shot. Say it with me guys looking good. The only thing left to do is digging for the taste test but before we do that please take a quick second to subscribe to the channel. Make sure you hit that bell to enable notifications as well. Quick reminder guys this recipe and all of my recipes on this channel can be found at MrMakeItHappen.com. Without further ado this thing has absolutely fallen apart perfectly tender. We got the mashed potatoes. I'm going to dunk this right into that bone marrow. That's what separates this from all the other beef dishes on the menu. This is incredible. Oh my god. That should be illegal.