These Braised Short Ribs Fall Apart With a Fork

All right, folks, listen, this is what we're gonna be doing. It's that time of the year, it's getting cold, it's time to start cooking. Let's go ahead and break it in with something simple. It looks like it's gonna be a lot, but it's not. Today, we're making braised short ribs. And as you guys can look, if you look down there, look at that right there. These are gonna be the stars, right? So listen, if you're really trying to get your feet underneath you and you're trying to impress somebody, don't forget, it's still gonna taste great. Then this is the recipe for you. Okay, so this is the part where I usually run over all of the ingredients, right? As you guys can see, I got a few ingredients right here. Listen, it is not that difficult, and don't let it scare you. And don't forget, the full ingredient list is on my website, that's smokingandgrillingwithab.com, and that's W-I-T-A-B.com. Okay, so the first thing we're getting ready to do, right? I got my bacon out right here. You guys seen it in the ingredient list, you know, as I always take the picture. Now, usually I take four strips of this, cut them down, and I put them inside of my Dutch oven, because we, you know, we melt and use that fat. I want you to pay attention right here, look at this. This is already done, I already keep this. And don't forget, we going into the holidays, folks, cook bacon and save this, because this is going to be the start of all your good meals, right? You know, bacon fat, this already has been rendered. And what we're going to do is, we're going to get ourselves just about a heaping tablespoon, and we just add that to the pot. But for those of you guys that ain't doing no pork, you guys can just use butter, and then we can use a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. Okay, I can see I'm really, really hot right now. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to take it. Now, this is the bone side down of my short rib, but I'm going to go meat side down first. We're going to do that with all of them. This time, I didn't do no seasoning in the beginning. You know what I mean? Because it gives it, you know, a lot of color. So what we're doing is, we're putting it down meat side, right? And then this one here, find the bone, and drop this one in the center. And this is what you want to do. We want to get some color. We're not trying to cook this, right? Because if you try to cook this, this is a lot, it's not going to be tender. That's where the time comes in. Right now, we'll just go ahead and start this little braising process. Now, I poured out a little bit of that oil, all of that beef grease that came out of there. You only need a little bit. I'm getting ready to cut this down. I quarter this, right? And I'm going to go ahead and break this down. So really, if you ask me, it's like I divided this up, this whole onion, into eighths. The other one, I'm going to do a little bit of, like a little bit of a julienne. You know what I mean? You know, a technique with it. But we take it like this, and I don't worry about it. Because if you look, you can see all the layers in here, right? They don't really break like you think they would. So when you put them in here and they get under that hot grease, they loosen up and they come loose. And then all of this releases its flavor in there too. So when you're doing yourself some short ribs, you know what I mean? What you want to have is a whole lot of flavor. So we just get that in there and we'll let that work. Now, when it comes over here, I'm going to go ahead and just cut this almost as if, I'm going to almost cut this like we're doing onion rings. They don't have to be no certain size. However they come, however you cut them, is how they going in there, right? So you get them like this. You see that? We just work it all inside of here. Now make sure when you discard some of that beef grease, don't forget we had started with, but the bacon grease as well. We get all of that in there. You don't want to throw too much of it away. I keep myself maybe about two tablespoons. That's all you need. Okay, so if you guys look down in here, I got my onions. You see they infuse all of the flavor, right? Then I'm moving this back right now. You see how it picks up all of that fine? Yes, sir. That's what you want. That's part of the flavor profile as we doing, you know, our short ribs, right? So what I'm doing now is, I'm just filling up my garlic press, squeezing this. Then I want you guys to notice, if you're new to my channel, this probably right here would be key. I put my minced garlic on top of something already, so I don't have no issues. Now, some people ask me how come I didn't make a design and make a bigger one, right? I like the fact that I can take everything that didn't get mashed and done. We add another one inside of here. We put that in there and then now we'll get it all. It almost doesn't leave anything to yield. When I say mince, it minces it all. Okay, with my garlic on top, now we move this around like this. See how we cooking this down? It's almost like we making grilled onions. Now we gonna do this for about three minutes. And then you guys all know once that minced garlic touches the hot bottom of the Dutch oven, it kicks back and let you know something. To me, it almost smelled like if it was saying anything, if I translate that word, it's almost like, hello, I'm gonna go ahead and preheat my oven to 350 degrees. Okay, so just keeping along with the way I teach, I like to line all of my ingredients up, you guys, you know what I mean? As I need them, right? Right now, I'm getting ready to reintroduce my short ribs to the pot. Then I'm gonna do my carrots, my mushrooms, and I got my seasoning. You gotta love the color on them. They might look a little funky now because they've been out of that grease. You know what I mean? But what we wanna do is we wanna take that toughness out of them, but it's still kind of soft. You know what I mean? But we gonna go ahead and work on them. You see that right there? That's that million dollar right there. Well, you know what? I'm gonna call it just that 100,000. We finna turn it into that million dollar. It doesn't make a difference how you put them in here, meat side down or whatever. You'll see the difference in just one second. And then don't forget you guys, if you guys look over here, I always keep myself some hot soapy water. And then look, this is something else I don't say. I've been in people's kitchen when they take the food that be on there and they put it right there and make their water dirty. I don't. I put that in. You know, I like to always rinse and then put them in there. Now, I always keep paper towels around, you know, so that I can wipe my hands. If you guys knew what I know, you might as well go ahead and invest in the paper towel company because I use so many. And then I'm gonna add these two together. So we'll just put these like that, right? So now I'm getting ready to just go ahead and put these carrots in there. Then we're gonna come with these mushrooms. And you guys can use mushrooms. I went ahead and just cut mine down. It's almost like freeze dry, but I just wanna mix this up like this. That might look like a lot to you guys, you know what I mean? No, but it's not. They're gonna soften up, shrink a little bit. When anytime you say short rib, I like to think that you got mushrooms in them. I got so many people that tell me they don't like mushrooms, right? And then when they eat everything that I'm doing, I'm like, hey, you know they have mushrooms in it, right? All right, so now we'll go ahead and just sprinkle a little bit of this on here. These are dry seasons, folks. But don't forget, the full ingredient list is on my website, that's smokingandgrillingwithab.com, and that's W-I-T-A-B.com. It's all starting to make sense to everybody right now. Now I'm gonna go ahead and raise this fire up because I wanna see it assemble before I get everything, you know, put it in the oven, right? Now, let's go ahead and address the elephant in the room. I know some of you guys say, I don't like to cook when you got some kind of red wine or any type of alcohol. Well, any type of liquor or anything like that. Not even really sure if wine constitutes as that. I think it's like a spirit and something else, or it just might be wine, might be the category. It cooks the wine taste out of it and leaves something unique in there. And that's what, you know, it's traditional with, you know, short ribs. Now, this is the part where I would add myself a pinch or two of, let's go with a pinch of salt. And then we're gonna put a little bit of fresh black pepper on top. All right, so this is where we at. For some of you guys that don't have this right here, this is gonna be the killer. So listen, this is the B. Remember I always talk about, I say the B, remember there's an A and then there's a B. The B is for like your heavier meats, right? So this right here, you don't think that these are braised short ribs constitute, you know, to be a little bit on the heavier side, this right here. It'd be the only difference that I have. If you guys ain't got none of this, you better run out and get it. Cause don't forget, holiday season is coming up. We're gonna be using both the A and the B. That's from my Level Up series. You guys can go to my website and check it out. You know what I mean? But right now we got this going. I'm gonna add just a little bit more to it. Just another little sprinkle and then I'm gonna leave it alone. Right now I'm just trying to make sure I get some of my liquid. That's gonna be everything, folks. All right, you see that right there? I know we nice and hot. My timer, my bell just went off telling me my oven is right. Now I'm gonna go ahead and just put this on the top. And you know why we gonna put it in the oven? Cause we don't wanna be like cooking this and then something stick to the bottom of it, right? When you put it in there, it almost acts as if we had a double boiler, right? So I'm gonna go ahead and open this up, hurry up and put this in there and I'm finna set myself a timer for two hours. Okay, folks. So look, this is what I'm finna do. I'll put these back. We're gonna go ahead and open this. This has been sitting here for a second. I'm gonna go ahead and break that so we don't catch no steam burn, right? I want you guys to look down in there. Look at this. One of the things I did was I did add myself a little bit more liquid, right? So I went ahead and put a little bit more chicken broth, you know, in here. You guys might have to do the same thing. Now I'm just scraping this cause this is all flavor that's in here. This is all from the steam. Oh man. Now, I wanna show you something. You wanna know, it'll just fall off the bone. Look at that right there. I'm gonna leave this in here. You know what I mean? Cause it's just like making stock, right? We got the bone, we got a little bit of that marrow. So until I finish cooking this, we want this to be in there cause that's a lot of flavor. Now I've already mentioned to you guys, I added a little bit more chicken broth in here. So this is good. Now I got a little level up for you guys. You see this right here? Remember we had, we had corn starch. What I'm gonna do is drop this inside of here. I'm finna add some cold water to it. And this is gonna be our thickening agent. What I did was, we all know how to make slurry. And if you don't, you know, we kept some corn starch. We do equal parts cold water. Then you wanna get a certain consistency. The key is just being hot. I'm just gonna add this over here, just like this. And I got asbestos cause I wanna get it all. And this is not like we thickening up some kind of sweet dessert, where it's just like get real, real sticky and almost look like we making bread in the inside. Right? But what I'm doing now is I'm just working this in. We going back in the oven, right? For about another 30 minutes. I like to always take myself a toothpick and then check my tenderness. I checked this already. Ooh, it's really on its way. It's almost ready. It's eatable now, but I wanna break it down just a little bit more. Right? And along with this thickening agent that we put in here, the slurry. If you guys didn't know, that's called a corn starch slurry. All my bakers, we all know what that means. Right? So we have that. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna rotate this and just get this big piece of meat right here. Let's get this. There we go. We wanna get this submerged. Then we gonna go just for another 30 minutes. Did you see that right there? Look, here go another one that's just ready to just, oh, it done already worked. You see that? We're on our way, folks. If you guys wanna add some potatoes, this'll be the time that you do that. Okay, so look, I got these potatoes right here. Now some of y'all gonna say, A.B., you finna put potatoes on top of potatoes? I'm gonna put these on some mashed potatoes. But some of you guys gonna add this to, you know, on a bed of rice. So what I'm doing now is I'm just cutting these down so these'll all be in the same size so they all be ready at the same time. And we all know we only got 30 minutes to be in here. We're gonna cut that one down in the quarter. Look at that. Now we all still the same. Okay, so you see what it looks like now that we put the potatoes in there. Now I'm finna put it back in the oven. We just gonna go for another 30 minutes. After that, we finna go ahead and plate these. You're gonna like this. Okay, folks, look, come in here and take a look. Now I got it out of here. A lot of times I give people the time, you know, we start out with two, you check, turn it, put it back in there for 30 minutes and then figure out, do I need to go another hour? So right now I got about four hours in on this. But I wanna show you something. Look at this right here. When I say it's nice, whoo-hoo, and it'll break up and do all of that, this is what you wanna, ooh, my goodness. That's what you want. And then you see this down here? Oh my God. This right here is what you wanna have, folks. Now look, let me go ahead and put this on top of some mashed potatoes. You know what I mean? Then we gonna go from there. I don't know what to say, but you wanna know. Okay, so come in here and look at this right now. Look at that. You know what I mean? So when it's soft, you know what I mean? You know, we don't want it to be mushy, but when it breaks like that, whoo-hoo, you guys gotta know, like, hey, it's fire. Now you guys can add all of the juices from there on there. For just, for this purpose right here, I'm gonna go ahead. Let's just go ahead and get some of this potato. But that right there is a forkful. Ah, you think he's gonna get away? No, sir. Cheers, y'all. Do yourself the treat. Yourself a solid. You gotta do it. You know what I mean? If you never, ever made braised short ribs, this right here is so easy. And you wanna talk about doing something that you proud of, this right here is it. Now, I can let you know, I've done it before without the wine. You gotta have the wine. You know what I mean? That's my personal preference. You guys let me know down in the comment section below, do you make yours with or without? You ask me, you gotta do it with. Now, check this out. Talk to me, tell me, is there anything that I left out? I know I did, like, a little bit of a doubled potato, but that's just the way I do mine, because some of you guys might wanna put them over rice. So now you got that, you know, the baby potatoes that go on top of that rice, too. And you got a lot of gravy. Now, with that being said, listen, if you're new to my channel, let me take this time to say, thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button, and tell everybody out there, there's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. You know what I'm about to do, folks? I'm finna, I'm not finna walk, I'm finna eat. I'm out.