Beef Shin Stew

Beef Shin Stew

Beef shin braised in red wine, one pot, 3.5 hr, serves 6

Ingredients

The stew
beef shin        1kg, in big chunks
onions           2, chopped
carrots          3, in thick chunks
celery           2 sticks, chopped
garlic           4 cloves, sliced
red wine         300ml
beef stock       500ml
tomato puree     2 tbsp
olive oil        2 tbsp

The aromatics
bay leaves       2
thyme            few sprigs
salt and pepper  to season

To finish
potatoes         800g, halved, optional

Ask for shin by name. Supermarkets often label it braising steak or stewing beef, and the packaged stewing beef is lean and cut unevenly.
Chuck is the easiest swap. Around £9 to £11 a kilo at a butcher.
Keep the bones if you get it bone in. The marrow goes into the sauce.

Recipe

1. Heat the oven to 130°C. Pat the beef dry and salt it.

Dry meat browns, wet meat steams.

2. Brown the beef hard in the oil in the Dutch oven, in batches, until properly dark. Lift it out.

Do this properly or skip it altogether. A pale, crowded sear gives you grey meat and twenty wasted minutes.

3. Into the same pot for 10 minutes:

[onions 2, carrots 3, celery 2 sticks, garlic 4 cloves]

4. Tomato puree for a minute, then the wine. Scrape the bottom of the pot and let it bubble down by half.

The scraping is the point. Everything you got from the browning is stuck to the bottom.

5. Beef back in with the meat mostly submerged, then lid on, into the oven for 3 hours:

[beef stock 500ml, bay leaves 2, thyme few sprigs]

6. Potatoes in for the last hour.

Any earlier and they collapse. Same for any root veg.

7. Check the meat pulls apart with a spoon before it comes out. Salt.

Go by the meat, not the clock. Overcooked shin tightens back up and goes tough again.

Shin is full of connective tissue, and three hours low turns that collagen into gelatin. That is what thickens the sauce and makes it glossy.
Better the next day.

❄ Freezer
Freeze: cool fully, then freeze in portions for up to 3 months. Leave the potatoes out if you plan to freeze it.
Reheat: from frozen, low oven or a gentle pan until piping hot.

Sources: Gill Meller via Nigella, delicious. magazine.