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Braised Short Ribs of Beef, Vegetables
1½ lbs. short ribs of beef 1 C cut onion 1 T salt 1/8 t white pepper 1 T caramel 2 C cut carrots 1/2 C cut celery 1 qt. potatoes 2 T flour Have butcher saw ribs into two-inch pieces; put into double roasting pan, sear, add seasoning, 2 C boiling water, reduce heat of oven, roast 1 hour. Add carrots, celery, diced potatoes and another C boiling water. Roast 1 hour more. Serve with vegetables. To gravy add flour and caramel mixed with cold water; boil three minutes, and add to meat. Rowena M. Nutt.
A straightforward oven braise, written in the shorthand of an early-twentieth-century domestic science class: capital C for cup, T for tablespoon, t for teaspoon. Two details need attention before you start — the caramel, and the fact that two hours is not long enough for short ribs.
- CaramelNot candy and not caramel sauce. This is burnt-sugar colouring — sugar cooked dark and let down with water — used to deepen gravy, the ancestor of bottled browning sauce such as Kitchen Bouquet. A tablespoon of either does the job; without it the gravy is pale but tastes the same.
- Oven temperaturesSear uncovered at 450-475F until the ribs are well browned, then "reduce heat of oven" means roughly 325-350F for the braise. The original gives no figures and assumes the cook can judge her own range.
- Double roasting panA two-piece roaster with a close-fitting lid. Any covered Dutch oven or a heavy pan sealed with foil works; the point is to trap steam so the liquid does not cook away.
- Give the meat longerShort ribs at 325F need roughly 2½ to 3 hours under cover before the connective tissue gives way. The recipe's first hour will leave them tough. Braise the meat alone until a fork twists easily in it, then add the vegetables for the last 45 minutes to an hour.
- A quart of potatoesMeasured by volume once diced — about 1¼ to 1½ lb of potatoes, or three to four medium ones. Waxy varieties hold their shape better than russets over an hour in liquid.
- Ease off the saltA full tablespoon for 1½ lb of meat is heavy by current taste, and it concentrates as the gravy reduces. Start with a teaspoon or so and correct at the end, after the flour has gone in.
- Thickening the gravyMix the 2 T flour and the caramel with cold water to a smooth slurry before it meets anything hot, then boil three minutes to cook out the raw starch. If the pan liquid has reduced too far, add water before thickening rather than after.
- YieldShort ribs are mostly bone. A pound and a half feeds two, or three modestly.
Church and club cook books of this period are a good record of how domestic-science teaching filtered into home kitchens: the clipped abbreviations, the exact eighth-teaspoon of white pepper and the volume-measured quart of potatoes are typical of the cooking-school style associated with the Boston Cooking School and similar institutions. Short ribs themselves were a cheap cut, and the recipe's logic is entirely economical — a small quantity of bony meat stretched with a quart of potatoes and two cups of carrots into a one-pan meal.