Home › Meat Recipes › Ox Tail En Casserole
Ox Tail En Casserole
3 heaping tablespoonfuls (3 ozs.) butter I sliced carrot 2 sliced onions 2 celery stalks 1 bunch herbs 8 whole peppers 4 cloves I blade mace I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) flour ½ pint (1 cup) brown sauce ½ pint (1 cup) stock 1 teaspoonful meat extract A few stuffed olives Salt and pepper Wash and dry the tails and cut them into joints.
Put the butter into an earthenware pan, add the vegetables, herbs, whole peppers, cloves, and mace. Place the joints on the top of these ingredients with a buttered paper over and the cover of the pan, and cook on the top of the stove for twenty minutes; then remove the paper, sprinkle in the flour, add the meat extract, brown sauce, salt and pepper to season, and the stock; replace the paper and cover and simmer for three and a half hours, adding a little stock occasionally as the liquor reduces, and removing any fat that may rise to the surface.
When ready to serve, put the ox tails on a hot fireproof dish, and rub the vegetables through a sieve with the liquor. Reheat the sauce, add the olives, and pour it over the meat.
A long, gentle braise of the sort the casserole books of the early 1900s were built around. The technique is sound as written; only the units and the vessel need translating.
- How much oxtailThe ingredient list omits the meat itself, though the method refers to "the tails." Something in the region of 3 lb of oxtail, cut into joints, suits this quantity of vegetables and liquid; the original gives no weight or yield.
- The liquid measuresThe printed page gives half a pint of brown sauce and half a pint of stock, each with one cup in brackets, and the text now reads that way. One cup (8 fl oz) of each is the amount that suits the rest of the recipe, with more stock added as the liquor reduces during the long simmer.
- Earthenware on direct heatAn unglazed or thin earthenware pan set straight on a burner will crack. Use a heavy enameled cast-iron or stainless casserole, or set an earthenware dish on a diffuser. The initial twenty minutes wants low heat, not a sear.
- The buttered paperThis is a cartouche: a round of paper laid directly on the food under the lid, which holds in moisture and keeps the top pieces from drying. Parchment does the job; butter one side and lay it buttered-side down.
- Brown sauceNot bottled brown sauce. The book means espagnole or a simple roux-thickened brown gravy made from stock. A cup of well-reduced beef stock thickened with a tablespoon of browned flour is a fair stand-in.
- Meat extractBovril or a beef bouillon concentrate. A teaspoon is enough; these are very salty, so season at the end rather than the start.
- Blade maceThe outer covering of nutmeg, sold whole as "blades." A quarter teaspoon of ground mace, or a light grating of nutmeg, substitutes. Bundle the peppercorns, cloves and mace in cheesecloth with the herbs if you would rather not sieve them out later.
- Time and temperatureThree and a half hours at a bare simmer is correct for oxtail; the connective tissue needs it. An oven at 325F, lid on, is easier to hold steady than a burner. The meat should give way at the bone but not fall off it.
- Fat and the sauceOxtail throws a great deal of fat. Skimming as you go helps, but chilling the finished liquor and lifting the solid cap off gives a far cleaner sauce. Pressing the vegetables through a sieve thickens it without more flour.
Oxtail was cheap butcher's meat, sold as an offcut long after prime joints had gone to better tables, and the slow moist cooking it demands made it a natural fit for the covered earthenware pot: a tough cut, a few root vegetables and hours of unattended low heat produced something rich enough to serve at dinner. The finish here is thoroughly Edwardian-French he vegetables sieved into the liquor as a thickener rather than strained away, the whole spices, the buttered paper " the sort of fashionable garnish that turns a frugal dish into a dinner-party one. Oxtail has since travelled the other way and is no longer the bargain it was.