Oxtail stew

A couple of weeks back I mentioned offal and how some people either love it or hate it.

According to the "Penguin Companion to Food," by Alan Davidson, offal refers to those parts of a meat animal which are used for food but which are not skeletal muscle. "The term literally means 'off fall,' or the pieces which fall from a carcass when it is butchered."

Offal also refers to those cheaper cuts of meat which chefs have pounced upon, tizzied up and then put on the menu with a fillet steak price tag, thereby making them trendy and pushing the price up. Once butchers almost gave away lamb shanks. Now you pay for one what you used to spend buying half a dozen. Another cut to assume rustic respectability is the oxtail.

An oxtail stew is good fare for a cold winter weekend where no one is too keen to venture too far from the fireside. It's not a dish that you can whip up in half an hour. It takes time to prepare and is, in fact, really good if you can start making it the day before you want to serve it. It gives the dish time to absorb all the flavours and also affords an opportunity to skim off any excess fat as the dish cools down after the initial cooking.

Most butchers will have the oxtail chopped and ready for the pot but if you have a whole one, cut it through where it is joined.

Remember there is quite a proportion of bone to meat so bear this in mind when buying oxtail to ensure you have enough to yield sufficient meat for the number of servings required. Your butcher will help advise on quantity.

Some recipes call for browning the oxtail segments first but I wouldn't bother.

Oxtail Stew

Place the oxtail segments in a large pot, cover with cold water and bring gradually to the boil, removing the scum as it rises to the surface. Simmer for at least two hours. Remove any excess fat. This is easily achieved if you cool the meat, then set the pot in the refrigerator until the fat congeals and can be spooned off. Otherwise spoon it off the hot meat and mop up the remaining fat by skimming a couple of crumpled paper kitchen towels over the surface.

Now add:

2 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 onions, roughly chopped
1 parnsip, peeled and chopped
2 sticks of celery, diced

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