Love always wins...

LOVE always wins, because love is patience and patience always wins. Patience, incidentally, is the cornerstone of my oxtail stew…well patience, wine and Bisto ;)

I don’t know if one can buy Bisto in the US and Canada, but it is an ancient cheat to help thicken and brown stews.  I say ancient, but the all-knowing Wikipedia says it has been around since 1908 [citation needed].

My old cheat 'Ahhh!' indeed.

To cook my oxtail stew I stubbornly refuse to use a pressure cooker – not because of any logical reason though, it is just one of those things that I inherently mistrust, like alcohol-free beer. What you really need for the perfect stew is a lot of patience.

It also helps having:

Red Wine – Cabernet Sauvignon, if possible – avoid sweet wine.

Six good quality beers

3-4 lovely carrots

1kg of oxtail

1 and a half large brown onions

Herbs to taste – I like oregano, rosemary and thyme

Two tins of whole peeled tomatoes

A good stock – I use Bisto

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

*optional: a teaspoon of garlic, which you fry off with the onions at the very beginning.

Open a bottle of good chilled beer and start drinking it. We grow our own onions, which are so strong that they could potentially be weaponised. For 1kg of fresh oxtail I use one and a half of these diabolical brown onions. Big ones, if we have. I finely chop these and brown them in a large pot with about two healthy glugs of olive oil. I season the meat well with salt and black pepper before adding it to the onions. Brown the meat thoroughly. When the meat is properly browned I add two tins of whole peeled tomatoes and herbs. We also grow our own herbs and I like adding oregano, rosemary and thyme - I am quite liberal with my herbs.  I then stir the lot and let that simmer for about ten minutes before adding about one big glass of red wine, whereupon I close the lid of the pot and let it simmer. At this point I usually like opening a second good beer, and making a start of drinking that. In a lovely old beer mug I mix the stock (Bisto, if you can find it). Two to three heaped tablespoons of stock powder to about 500ml of boiling water. Mix that well and add it to the pot.  Let the whole lot simmer on a lower heat stirring occasionally, to decrease cooking time marginally and to tenderise the meat well, keep the lid closed as much as possible.

If you want veggies in the stew, lovely sweet carrots work well. Cut the carrots into discs, not too thin, and add them about two hours into the process. We also, occasionally, add button mushrooms whole. Open your third beer and start drinking that.

The entire process takes about four hours of cooking, or until the meat is well soft. Oxtail stew is well soft when you can nudge the meat of the bone with no effort.  One can supplement the liquid in the pot with more stock or simply water. Make sure that the rest of your beers remain chilled and, in the company of friends, take a swig occasionally while keeping an eye on your pot.

I shamelessly pilfered this off the internet, my stew is a lot darker and therefore less pretty :)