Breaking in the Le Creuset – Braised short ribs

(To the tune of the “Chef’s Song” in “The Little Mermaid”)
Le Creuset
Le Creuset
How I love Le Creuset
Love to braise
And to stew yummy meat…

For Christmas, Husband bought me my first piece of Le Creuset. I had been mentioning wanting a French oven for a while now; I guess repeating myself works on him!

Shiny!

I decided to make braised short ribs as my first dish using my red round 5qt. This would test it out on the stove and in the oven. Also, beef…something Husband loves and I had to make him food he would eat. I did some research on how to make braised short ribs and holy geebus, there’s a lot of recipes out there. In the end, I just sort of winged it based on what I saw in common between all the recipes.

Hello ribs... Imma cook you n eatchu

First, I threw some salt n’ pepper on 2 lbs of short ribs.

It's just flour, officer. Honest.

Just browned the outside

Then I coated the ribs in flour and seared them in the pot. I put in enough extra virgin olive oil to coat the bottom of the French oven.  I put the ribs aside.

And in go the veggies

Next, I took the veggies I had roughly chopped and threw them in. 1 big carrot, 2 stalks of celery, about 1/2 an onion… I let them cook for a few minutes to soften up.

In went 2 cups of chicken stock, 2 cups of red wine (I used pinot noir), 1tsp of salt, 1tsp of garlic salt, a bunch of pepper and garlic powder and 3 branches of rosemary. The liquid was just enough to cover most of the meat. I scraped the bottom of the pot to make sure I got all the flavor from the seared meat.

Ready to serve...

I put the lid on my Le Creuset and stuck it in the oven @ 350F for 2-2 1/2 hours. When they were done, I let it all rest for another 20-30 mins, mainly cuz I was busy putting the baby to bed and then had to whip up some instant mashed potatoes to serve with it. Yeah, I know… I go thru the trouble of making braised short ribs only to serve them over INSTANT mashed potatoes? I had baby brain and completely forgot to pick up some potatoes to roast so that was all I had in my pantry. Anyways, the sauce from the pot went really well over the potatoes. Yum.

Eat it up. YUM!

This came out AWESOME. Fall-of-the-bone fork tender, flavorful… Husband said I could make this any time for him which means he loves it. Not he likes it or he thinks it’s okay. He LOVES it. WOOHOO! I think next time though, I’ll mince the rosemary cuz eating the leaves was annoying.

I really liked this recipe. It was easy to prepare and was low maintenance. I didn’t have to babysit this while it was cooking, a major plus for Mommy. I’ll definitely be coming back to this one. Now what to cook in my Le Creuset next?