Good For The Soul

Soul food, when I open my restaurant the cusine will be derived for these two beautiful words, and slow cooking is a very big part of good soul food.

So tonight I am going to cook some delicious slow cooked short ribs, with creamy stone ground grits.
I will use a braising method to cook the ribs,  searing the meat and covering with liquid and cooking at a low temperature for 3-4 hours.

Ok lets get started:

Ingredients:

• 4 bone in short ribs
• 3 carrots
• 2 stalks celery
• 2 green bell peppers
• 1 tbl spoon garlic
• 2 cups beef stalk
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 tbl spoon mustard
• enough flour to coat
• salt and pepper

Rough chop all the vegetables ( mince the garlic), this is a rustic style dish so don't spend to much time making sure your vegetable are all perfectly square, unless you are using this dish for your Top Chef audition tape and in that case good luck!

Cooking:

In a large bowl, season meat and coat with flour. Heat a heavy straight sided saute pan and add oil, shake off excess flour from ribs and sear on all side until they are a nice golden brown color.

A hot pan and room temperature oil will help the meat not stick to the pan.

Once the meat has finished, remove from pan and set aside. Add a tbl spoon of olive oil back to the pan and add all the vegetables. Adding the garlic last, and using the other vegetables as a "nest" helps the garlic not burn, since it cooks at a much faster and at a lower temperature. 

When you notice the onions have started to sweat and are becoming more translucent, it is time to add your mustard. Stir to make sure all vegetables are coated.

Deglaze (adding a liquid to a hot pan helps remove all the food that has stuck to the pan, that makes the sauce really tasty) the pan with the white wine. Reduce the wine by half, and season with salt and pepper. Seasoning as you go will make you food much more flavorful then seasoning at the end.

Return the meat to the pan and add beef stock, enough to almost cover the beef. Make sure to bring your beef stock to a boil first.

Bring liquid to a boil and cover. If your pan does not have a lid, aluminum foil works fine.

place in a pre-heated oven at 325 for 3 1/2 hours.

Now for the grits, put away anything that says instant in the title, stone ground also know as polenta, take a little longer, but like most things, definitely worth the wait.

Bring 8 cups of water with half stick of unsalted butter to a boil, I like to add salt and black pepper at this  point. Once boiling add 2 cups grits, (grits to water ratio is 4:1) stir vigorously to avoid any grits sticking to the pan. Once the mixture is smooth you can turn down the heat to a simmer. Be careful, grits pops and really burns, lava is how it is referred to in most restaurant!!! Taste the grits after about 20 minutes, for seasoning and texture, it should not be gritty, now add 1 cup heavy cream and the other half stick of butter. 

By this point your whole house should be smelling amazing and your family my have migrated towards the kitchen, take this time to see how everyones day was, the best conversations are had while sharing a great meal.

To make sure your meat is ready, holding to forks pull in opposite directions, if the meat pulls away it is ready, hence "fork tender". Remove meat and vegetable separately and allow liquid to come up to a boil.

With equal parts butter and flour, make a roux, this is used to thicken the sauce. Melt butter on low heat and whisk in flour. 2 tbl spoons of roux is a good amount for this sauce. Add roux to boiling sauce, stir, check season and remove from heat.

Roux should be smooth, and the consistency of thick pancake batter.

Spoon your grits into bowl, grits should be thick enough to pick up with a fork.

Place a short rib on grits and ladle sauce on top.

Enjoy!!!