SLOW COOKED SHORT RIBS, SESAME MASH & SLAW

8 full hours is all it takes to achieve the most perfect meat you will ever eat. If you have a slow cooker, that's great. If you don't then you can just use the oven and an oven proof dish but the electricity bill may be about 82p higher than if you use a slow cooker, so it's definitely worth investing. Sesame mash? Yeah it's proper delicious trust me.

30 Mins Prep + 8 Hours Cooking

Ingredients

(To Serve 4)

FOR THE BEEF RIBS

‍4 Pieces of Fat Beef Short Rib
Large Knob of Ginger
4-5 Cloves Garlic
150ml Soy Sauce
3 Tablespoons Rice Wine Vinegar
3 Tablespoons Hoisin Sauce
2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
A Red Chilli
A Large White Onion
2 Tablespoons Sunflower Oil
A good few pinches of Salt
Up to ONE LITRE of Beef Stock
Tablespoon of Runny Honey
2 Bits of Star Anise
5-6 Black Peppercorns

FOR THE MASH

6-7 Potatoes (Maris Pipers are best)
Tablespoon of Salted Butter
2 Tablespoons Toasted Sesame Oil
100ml Milk
Salt and Pepper

FOR THE SLAW

Half a Red Cabbage
2 Carrots
Handful of Coriander
Handful of Cashew Nuts
Tablespoon of Sesame Oil
Tablespoon Rice Wine Vinegar
Pinch of Salt

Sesame Seeds (To Serve)
Sliced Red Chilli (To Serve)‍

Ingredients

Instructions

If you're using a slow cooker, get it heating up a little. If you're using the oven method, preheat to about 130ºC with your chosen oven dish, dutch oven sort of lidded thing inside it. In a food processor/blender you need to blitz your ginger, garlic, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, hoisin, brown sugar, and chilli. Set this aside.
Chop up a white onion roughly and get a large frying pan nice and hot. Chuck in a splash of sunflower oil and brown off each side of your short ribs for about a minute, seasoning with salt as you turn them. Chuck in the onion as you brown the meat and let that soften a bit. Add your blended saucy mixture. You can use a splash of beef stock to get any flavour that has stuck to the sides of your blender in with the meat. Then you want to add quite a lot of the beef stock. Not all of it straight away. It depends on how deep your dish is for cooking the ribs. Remove the ribs and pop them into your slow cooker or oven dish. Pour everything over. If the ribs are not covered then top up with beef stock, it's important that they're covered. Squirt in some honey and add your star anise and pepper corns. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Literally 8 hours. It's the perfect amount of time. 7 hours isn't enough. You need 8. Don't even think about giving them any less time or any more time. Low heat. 8 Hours. If using the oven, 8 hours in the oven on 130C. Trust me.
When the ribs are done set them aside in a bowl but pour all of the braising liquid into a pan and cook on a high heat to reduce to a thicker gravy type sauce. It should need to be reduced by about half. Whilst this bubbles away, you can peel your spuds and chop them and get them boiling for 10 minutes in a pan of salty water. They should be nice and soft. When they're done, drain them and then add a knob of butter, your milk, salt and pepper and the all important sesame oil. Use a hand blender to get these nice and smooth. Or a ricer. If you can't be bothered just mash it but the smoother the better. You can pass it through a sieve to get things extra smooth. Set the mash aside with a lid over it to retain the heat.
Whip up a slaw by chopping up red cabbage. Pop the cabbage in a bowl and grate the skin off your carrots. Use the peeler to peel ribbons of carrot into the bowl with your cabbage. Finely chop a handful of coriander and add this to the bowl as well. Add your sesame oil, vinegar, salt and crumble in a handful of cashew nuts. Give that a good mix and you're good to go.
Serve a dollop of mash with a nice bit of succulent, juicy, tender, falling off the bone short rib on top. Pour over some beautiful braising liquid gravy and add a handful of slaw. Top the beef with sliced chilli and white sesame seeds. Tuck in and think about a meal that you've had before that compares. It might take you a while.