Recipe: a one-pot Sunday braise
Beef, red wine and winter vegetables, slowly cooked in an enamel casserole while you get on with your day.
This is the dish we make when friends are coming and we would rather spend the afternoon with them than at the stove. Everything happens in one pot, and the oven does most of the work.
Serves 6
- 1.5 kg beef shin, cut into large pieces
- 2 onions, 3 carrots, 2 celery sticks, roughly chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, a few sprigs of thyme, 2 bay leaves
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 500 ml red wine and 500 ml beef stock
- Olive oil, salt and pepper
Method
- Heat the oven to 150 °C. Season the beef generously.
- Brown the beef in batches in a little oil in the casserole. Take your time — colour is flavour.
- Soften the vegetables in the same pot for ten minutes, then stir in the garlic and tomato paste.
- Return the beef, add the wine and let it bubble for two minutes. Add the stock and herbs.
- Cover and cook in the oven for three hours, until the beef falls apart at the touch of a spoon.
Serve straight from the pot, in the middle of the table, with bread for the sauce.
It is even better the next day, so make extra.