How to make spicy oxtail stew
Published: 17-Oct-2012 (00:49); Viewed: 4008; Difficulty: 4 out of 10
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It is impossible to find the origin of this dish. From one hand, the rich and spicy character points to the Mediterranean cuisine, but from other hand, set of oriental spices related with some sort of oriental cuisine. Anyway, this spicy oxtail stew recipe is a very rich dish, which should be present in any posh restaurants. The spicy oxtail recipe is very simple, but the set of spices a bit unusual for European countries, and the cooking time, about 5+ hours, can be a problem, but the results will be satisfactory for any choosy food lovers. Average oxtail will give three decent portions of the spicy oxtail stew.
step-by-step instructions
-
 Ingredients for one oxtail (three portions).
- Oxtail. One large oxtail with trimmed fat.
- Vegetables for the stew:
- Tomatoes, two average size fruits
- Carrots, two roots
- Onion, two average sized bulbs
- Sweet peppers, two fruits. Use normal or pointed one.
- Spices:
- Galangal, average piece of root, about 150 gm
- Coriander seeds, 1½ tsp
- Long pepper (or Long black pepper), ½ tsp
- Szechuan pepper, 1 tsp
- Black cardamom, 6 fruits
- Juniper berries, ½ tsp
- Brown sugar, 1½ tsp
- Hot chilli, like birds eye, or Scotch bonnet, one fruit.
- Tamarind powder, 1½ tsp
- Garlic, one bulb
- Salt, to taste, about 1-2 tsp
- Olive oil, 1tbsp to start frying
- Good, full bodied red wine. ½ bottle. Do not use cheap cooking wine, this spicy oxtail stew deserves to have perfect wine.
- Herbs, coriander and basil, small bunches of each.
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 Cut oxtail between the vertebrae into a single bone pieces.
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 Brown oxtail on high heat with a drop of olive oil. This will not only enhance the flavour of the meat, but also melts the leftover fat from the tail.
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 Place oxtail into a casserole and add sliced onion and slightly crushed garlic. Cook at medium heat until onion will be softened.
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 Chop carrot into a small cubes, and fry them until they starts browning.
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 Add carrot into casserole. Add slices galangal – it is not necessary to slice it very thinly. Add all spices. Split or slightly crush the black cardamom. Cook few minutes to fill the oil and fat with spices aroma.
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 Add chopped peeled tomatoes and cover everything with red wine.
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 Bring to boil and reduce heat to the lowest possible. Cover with lid and cook for about 5 hours. Check occasionally, that the liquid is not evaporated. If the liquid evaporates, add some more boiling-hot water, but check, why it is gone, either the lid is not very well fitted, or the heat is not very low. Near the end of this period, check the salt and sourness of this dish and adjust it.
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 Add chopped sweet chilli and cook on medium heat for 15 minutes.
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 Take casserole of the heat and add chopped herbs.
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 Serve and enjoy!!!
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tips and tricks
- Never chop oxtail, cut it through the joints.
- For better presentation, use only large oxtail pieces.
- You can accelerate cooking time by using pressure-cooking, but the details of such procedure will be given sometimes later.
- The set of spices is very important in this spicy oxtail recipe, and it will be very difficult to substitute them, but we will give you some useful advice how to change them if desperately needed.
- Possible substitutions...
- Galangal, can be substituted by the same amount of ginger.
- Long pepper (or Long black pepper) can be substituted by ordinary black peppercorns.
- Black cardamom, must have!!!
- Juniper berries, can be substituted by twice amount of Szechuan pepper
- Tamarind powder, can be substituted by tamarind paste, or by lemon or lime juice.
- For even better taste, add few dried Cao Dou Kou and Hong Amomum, they are chinese cardamoms.
- This dish should be cooked in a casserole, but the primary browning can be done in a suitable non-stick frying pan.
- The cooking of this dish is not very time restricted, and you can prepare all the vegetables during the cooking, it is not necessary to clean and chop everything in advance.
- Rice will be the best side dish.
- You can seriously change the sweetens and appearance of this dish by omitting the sweet chilli at the end. Look to the front picture – this was cooked without sweet chilli.
by: Librarian
tags:
beef;
black cardamom;
galangal;
long pepper;
offal;
oxtail;
restaurant recipes;
stew;
tamarind
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