Thomas Keller and Short Rib Stroganoff

A couple years ago, my sister bought me the Thomas Keller cookbook called Ad Hoc at Home. For those of you who don’t know Thomas Keller, he is a world reknown chef best known for his famous restaurant in Yountville, CA called the French Laundry. He has won numerous James Beard Awards and has multiple restaurants with 3 star Michelin ratings.

Keller is known for his precision in cooking at his restaurants. However, in this book he tries to share recipes that are more relaxed for the home cook. He does say that there are certain things that you cannot compromise on, notably time and temperature.

I have tried a number of his recipes. My favorite so far is his meatballs with a roasted fennel tomato sauce. My wife Susan doesn’t even like meatballs and she loves these.

They may be simplified recipes for the home cook, but that doesn’t mean they are easy. Most of his recipes, refer to other recipes in the book. For example,  within the meatball recipe is a separate recipe for the papparadelle pasta and another one for the tomato sauce. Then within the papparadelle recipe is a recipe for the pasta dough and within the tomato sauce there is a recipe for the sachet of herbs. It can be a bit of a process.

Today (and tomorrow) I am trying his beef stroganoff recipe. Although it is still going to take two days, in the spirit of the book, my wallet, and my time, I going to simplify even more. I will not be making my own beef broth and I will not be making my own pappardelle.

Picture from Wikipedia

If Keller ever reads this, I am sure he would feel I bastardized the recipe. However, I have another job during the week. Sorry.

What makes this recipe so exciting to try, is that it uses beef short ribs for the beef. This is also why it takes two days to prepare.

According to the "Dining Chicago Blog," short ribs are tender and meaty, rectangular bones cut from the underside of a steer’s rib cage – from the sternum, or ‘plate’ up toward the shoulder area known as the  ‘chuck’”.

Short ribs have a lot of fat in them and are usually cooked very slow to render the fat, which is a more French style of cooking, or it can be cut into strips and seared quickly over high heat, which is a more Korean style of cooking.

I am going to spend the day braising them slow and low and then let them sit in their marinade and rendered fat in the fridge overnight. The next day I will make the beef stroganoff and hopefully enjoying it while watching the Packers beat the living snot of the Vikings.

Below I have detailed out how I made the short ribs. If you don’t want to read all the details, I will give you a quick summary and the moral of the story.

Even though I took some short cuts and it was a pain in the ass, this meal was one of the best meals I have ever made. My in-laws and my wife completely agree. However, I think I say this about everything I have made from this cookbook.  Keller really does give easy to follow instructions. There are just a lot of them. However, it was completely worth it. The braised short ribs just melt in your mouth and every detail to the little sprinkle of sea salt at the end of the meal makes a difference. 

So if you feel like cooking for two days and spending another day doing the dishes and cleaning up the mess, you should definitely try this recipe. Of course, you could always buy a can of Campbell’s Cream ofMushroom and cook the classic stroganoff that grandma used to make.

THE DETAILS

Day 1: Braised Beef Short Ribs

First thing I did was make the red wine reduction. This included a bottle of red wine, onion, carrot, shallots, leeks, button mushrooms, fresh thyme, flat-leaf parsley, fresh bay leaves, black peppercorns, garlic.

By the way, leeks are really expensive at Whole Foods. I have no idea how much they cost elsewhere, but they were $2.99 a stalk  at Whole Foods. Yikes. I skimped on these a bit to save a little money.

I combined all of this in a large dutch oven and cooked it down until there was very little liquid.

While the marinade was reducing, I prepared the short ribs. The recipe called for boneless short ribs, because they were easier to cut away the sinew and may make it easier to eat later. I ignored that part. I braised the short ribs bone in. I didn’t want to miss out on any additional flavor the bone might provide.  The bone fell out after cooking and it was easy to prepare later.

Before braising the short ribs, I then browned them meat side down in canola oil for a few minutes. Then I added more onion, carrot, leeks, garlic, bay leaves, and thyme to the wine reduction. Before adding the meat, I put a layer of cheesecloth to separate the meat from the reduction. This will later make it easier to separate short ribs from everything else. I then put the meat on top of the cheesecloth and the poured enough beef broth to cover the top of the meat.  I then made a lid out of parchment paper with a hole in the middle. I cooked this at 350 degrees for a couple hours.

After removing the meat from the over, it was all I could do not to eat it right then. I may have tried a little. I put the short ribs aside and strained the liquid from the marinade. I put the short ribs back in the strained liquid and refrigerated over night. 

Phew. Day one done. All that work and I still haven’t had any dinner. I poured a glass of some leftover Nebbiolo and reheated some leftover soup.

 

Day 2: Beef Stroganoff

My goal is to finish this by 3:15pm in time for the Packer game. They are playing the Vikings and need to beat them to remain undefeated. Problem is that I overslept. Recovering from a bit of a cold, I took a bit too much cough syrup the previous night (Tussin X). Plus, I hadn’t even set my fantasy football lineup. I didn’t get started until 1:00pm.

There is basically four parts to the beef stroganoff: 1) the cream sauce, 2) the mushrooms, 3) the short ribs, and 4) the pasta.  Let me warn you, this day is not for the faint of dishes. I made a mess. Susan will attest to this.

The cream sauce involved chopping a pound of Cremini mushrooms in a food processor. I then sautéed some onions in butter and added the chopped mushrooms to the onions. I then cooked until the liquid had simmered out of the mushrooms. I added cream and a satchet.

What is a satchet you ask? According to Thomas Keller, it is a little packet of thyme, bay leaves, and peppercorns wrapped in a little “satchet” of cheesecloth.

While simmering the cream sauce, I started browning another pound of sliced Cremini mushrooms in a hot skillet with butter and canola oil. Keller makes it clear not to stir the mushrooms while they are browning. It will only allow them to steam and not brown. After cooking these in batches, I put them on paper towel to drain the grease off. I took the short ribs out of the fridge. The marinade had a nice layer of fat on top. I removed the fat and carefully fished out the short ribs from the remaining liquid. I cut the short ribs into 1-2 inch cubes and then put them aside to get to room temperature.

 Then I took the simmering cream sauce and put it in a blender until it was completely smooth. I strained this mixture back into a sauce pan  added some crème fraiche for good measure. The heavy cream apparently wasn’t enough. I mixed in ¾ of the browned mushrooms and kept on low heat while finishing the recipe.

I heated some oil in a cast iron pan and browned (again) the short ribs on one side until they were basically caramelized. I flipped them and put the whole pan in the over at 350 to cook through.

I boiled some egg noodles in yet another pan. I mixed these with butter. Finally, I was ready to serve. I put the noodles on a plate, added a couple dollops of sauce, sprinkled on the leftover browned mushrooms and some chopped parsley. I carefully place the short ribs on top and sprinkled with some Gray Sea Salt.

Done. I am now enjoying one of the best meals I ever made with a Paulaner Ocktoberfest and the Packers beating the Vikings..  The meat just melts in my mouth.