So this is a recipe for delicious, mouth-braised beef cheeks or ox cheeks, depending on what you want to call them. It’s rich, comforting, delicious, and super simple; it just takes quite a while, but the result is worth waiting for.

What you need

So first of all, you’re going to need beef or ox cheeks, so you may want to get large beef cheeks, and when you get them, you want to trim off any hard, silvery skin that’s on them, because that’s not very nice. I’ll make it tough. And you need some diced onion, carrots, celery, and garlic as a base for your broth liquid.

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You can use a good red wine like a Pinot Noir, possibly a good, rich beef stock, and some tomato paste. Your herbs and spices that you need: fresh thyme, rosemary, bay leaves. If you haven’t got them fresh, dry works just as well; absolutely no problem.

Steps

So first of all, we’re going to get the beef cheeks ready. So first we have to season your beef cheeks, so a good sprinkling of salt rubbed into them, and we’re going to sear and brown the beef cheeks first of all to get a really rich, deep golden color on all sides, which adds to the overall flavor. So heat up a pan with a little bit of oil, and you’re going to brown them until they’re a nice, nice deep golden color, then take them out and set them aside.

And then we’re going to start to build the flavors and the base of our sauce. So you can sauté chopped onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. So you probably need two or three large onions, a couple of carrots, a couple of sticks of celery, and about six cloves of garlic.

Okay, just have them all chopped up nicely, soft, and that is the key. Don’t rush this. You want them to go really nice and soft.

Once they’re nice and soft, you’re going to start with about two tablespoons of tomato paste, and then you’re going to put in your red wine, or you can use some sherry here or port, because other than a nice flavor, I like to use a nice Spanish Sherry to get a Spanish kind of vibe going on. Put in your liquid and scrape off the brown bits from the bottom of the pan, and then let it bubble for a minute to get all those flavors up off the bottom.

Then you’re going to put your beef cheeks back in the pot with your vegetables, put in your stock- probably about a liter of stock- it’s going to go in, and then cover it up tightly. Then you’re going to slow cook it in the oven for 3 to 4 hours, until when you put a fork in it, it falls apart. So, nice slow cooker, but 150°.

Okay, and check it after three and a half hours; check to see if it’s falling apart. If it’s not, put it back in.

Once it’s falling apart, what you’re going to do is take it out of the oven, remove the meat, strain off the cooking liquid, and you’re going to blend that to get a nice, thick, delicious, glossy gravy. So once you’ve got that, you’re ready to serve it up. I like to serve this with nice creamy mashed potato; you could serve it with polenta or even rice or just some lovely crusty bread.

So you can serve it with your mash, or a nice ring of mash with some of your beef cheek falling apart on top, spoon over some delicious thick gravy, and then garnish with some chives or parsley.

I also like to do this with crispy onions. Now, to do this, you get two whole onions, chop them up nice and fine, slice them nice and fine, heat olive oil up in a pan, and you’re going to fry your onions until they’re golden brown and crispy.

Drain them on kitchen paper and let them dry out, and then you put them ready to sprinkle on top as that final dressing and final garnish to make it totally delicious.

You can also do this in a slow cooker if you have one. Again, it’s going to take about four hours, depending on your setting, in your slow cooker.