Main ingredients
Beef recipes
From quick steak to eight-hour braise.
Beef divides into two kinds of cooking and almost nothing in between: the fast, hot, dry cook for the tender cuts, and the long, wet, low one for everything else. Which category a cut falls into is decided by how much connective tissue it carries, and the reason a slow-cooked shin becomes tender while a slow-cooked fillet becomes grey is collagen — it melts into gelatine somewhere around 70°C given enough time, and a cut with none has nothing to gain from the wait. The recipes here say which category a dish is and why, and they give the internal temperatures rather than only the minutes, because the thickness of the piece matters more than its weight.
10 recipes
Slow-Cooked Beef Ragu
Coarse beef mince browned in batches then held at a bare simmer for three hours, finished in the pan with the pasta.
Slow-Braised Beef Shin
Beef shin browned hard then cooked for hours at a bare simmer, until the collagen melts and the meat falls apart under a fork.
Pho Bo
Charring the onion and ginger before they go near water is what makes the broth smell like pho rather than beef soup. Everything else is patience.
Beef Chow Mein
Beef coated in cornflour and seared in batches in a pan hot enough to smoke, with the sauce going in only at the very end.
Tagliatelle al Ragù
Bolognese ragù cooked for three hours with milk and a little wine, served on fresh tagliatelle rather than spaghetti, which is what Bologna actually does.
Steak Diane
Thin beef fillet seared in seconds, then finished in a mustard, brandy and cream pan sauce flamed at the table.
Birria de Res
Beef braised in a deep red chilli broth until it shreds, served as a stew or folded into tacos dipped in its own fat.
Beef Stroganoff
Strips of beef seared fast and finished in a soured-cream and mustard sauce that is warmed through rather than boiled.
Beef and Ale Stew with Herb Dumplings
Chuck steak simmered in dark ale until it gives, with suet dumplings steamed on the surface of the pot for the last half hour.
Albóndigas in Almond Sauce
Pork and beef meatballs simmered in a pale sauce thickened with fried bread and almonds rather than flour.