Monday 18 February 2013

Winter comfort Food . Ox tail and cheek stew and Yukgaejang

When the weather is cold like this Winter, everybody like to eat heart warming comfort food, we are a Anglo Korean house hold , I make both of comfort food, English and Korean, soup or slow cooked stew, using cheap cut is the key because they are not only economic also have full flavour I am looking for.

Oxtail and cheek stew

Korean spicy oxtail and leek soup ( yukgaejang)
 
We all love ox- tail stew with dark beer or red wine, but I recently tried new my recipe for this, mix with ox cheek, it was truly revelation for us. Certain super market butcher section is selling ox cheek now,  I thought I will try with ox tail, both need slow cooking and more interesting to add different texture of meat , most of all very cheap and full of flavour.

I do not use carrot for the stew , found carrot makes stew a little sweet,
2-4  celery sticks( chopped).  2 medium size white onions( chopped0. 5-6 garlic clovers and crushed. ginger ( your thumb size, chopped). 100g chestnut mushrooms. 2 ox cheek meat, 3 big oxtail pieces.
2-3 cups of Red wine or a bottle of dark beer .  1Tsp Worcestershire sauce, 1tsp of tomato puree. 2 bay leaves, 1tsp dried thyme or fresh thyme. half of dry chilli

Thick bottomed caster iron stew pan, 1tsp of rapeseed oil and heat up, fried all the cut vegetables and set aside.  Cut fat off from the oxtail, in a big bowl 3Tsp plain flour, salt and pepper mix. add meat and shake to be coated .
Add oil (1Tsp) , heat up and add meat to brown, little by little. add vegetables, chilli, garlic, ginger bay leaves, thyme and pour water. When stew is boiling add wine or beer, boil for 4-5 minutes first, add tomato puree, Worcestershire sauce boil, season with salt & pepper.
Put in the low (120c) oven for 3 hours to slowly cook. take out and stir , if stew is dryish add 1cup of boiling water and put it back to oven at 150c and cook another 45 minutes and serve with boiled barley and savoy cabbage leaves.
I boiled cabbage leaves in the salted water for 2 minutes, make sure not boil too long.
Barley is cooked onion, 1 garlic cloves 1Tsp olive oil, for more than 1 hour, make sure soak before cook. Add chopped parsley on the stew and barley.
Meat is so tender, fall off the bone and texture and flavour are rich and delicious!!

For our Korean Winter comfort food is Spicy leek soup made with Ox-tail. adding sliced tube rice cake and eat with rice and kimchi of course.
My family love this heart warming Korean soup, Yukgaejang as I do !!

 

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