French Fridays with Dorie: Beef short ribs in red wine and port

Dorie Greenspan beef short ribs braised in red wine and port on eatlivetravelwrite.comAka, the best beef ribs you have ever eaten in your life 🙂

Oh my, this was honestly one of the best dishes to come out of Around My French Table, and as you know, there have been so many hits so far, this is really saying a lot.  I’ve actually never eaten beef ribs (that I can remember) and I even encountered some confusion when I went to buy them at Rowe Farms. Short ribs, did I want them cut up or whole? English cut?  I had no idea. I knew I didn’t want to serve these babies uncut:

I spent an embarrassing 20 minutes deciding what I needed/wanted, all the while furiously Googling stuff on my iPhone, then I found that Bon Appétit had published a version of the recipe stating the size required for said ribs.

Once I had them home, I set about roasting them briefly, then braising them in an intoxicating mix of port, red wine and a whole slew of herbs and spices.  I was pleased to see the recipe said you could make it a day ahead because they do braise for 3 hours and that’s just not practical for me if I arrive home at 6pm! By the time they were out of the oven, most of the meat was falling off the bone – I had a tough time getting a whole one for a photo!

Overnight, our house smelled absolutely heavenly and the next evening, when I arrived home and set about heating them up, the house still smelled amazing.  Dorie’s recipe called for a citrus gremolata but I didn’t have time to make that. I whipped up some mashed sweet potatoes and mixed in a little cream and blue cheese. I liked the colour contrast.

Our guests raved about these ribs. I literally had to hide two of them so I could get a photo the following day. The glaze was rich and flavourful but not overpowering – I was worried that with both port and wine it might be too much.  But the braising liquid has spent so much time in the oven that it burns off the alcohol so what you are left with is a sticky sweet beefy broth that you reduce until it’s glaze-consistency.  They were perfect.  Neil ate the two saved ones and they were, dare I say, even better two days later.  This is definitely a dish that benefits from a long time in the oven – even though we started out with great meat, this only served to make it better.  It was falling off the bone, so tender you could just about spread it on bread.

I have never thought that I was a “rib person” but this recipe has changed my mind.

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French Fridays with Dorie participants do not publish the recipes on our blogs, rather, we prefer if you purchase Around My French Table for yourselves (trust me, you definitely want this book!) which you can do here on Amazon (great price right now) or here on Amazon Canada (it’s also on special!).  Go on, treat yourself join us in 2011!

82 thoughts on “French Fridays with Dorie: Beef short ribs in red wine and port”

  1. Fairly easy to pick a wine for this one: go big or go home.

    I did not match the wine I gave Mardi for the braising, to be honest. I gave her a half-bottle of Argentinian Malbec (that inexplicably was not finished the night before)…thought it matched the fruit-forward notes of the Port.

    But to drink with the ribs, I immediately thought of something from the Rhone Valley in France. (I wanted something with some meat on its bones, if you’ll forgive the pun.) I settled on a Vacqueyras. This lesser-known AOC is in the Southern Rhone, and features wines of earthy power – with a nice added spice to match the ribs. It’s a blend of primarily Grenache with Syrah.

    I was lucky enough to have a 2003 in the cellar, which was a treat indeed!

    Alternates? Rhone is a good bet, North or South (Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas.) Syrah/Shiraz as well, from Oz or California. You want something deep in colour with a fair bit of body to it. That Malbec above wouldn’t go amiss, either, though if you’re veering to South America I’d try a Carmenere first.

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  2. First… wow! Love the photos! The contrasting colours and execution are fabulous. Stunning and I am not a rib person either but now you are making me want to be.

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  3. what a beautiful dish – the contrast with the colors is lovely! and ribs? well, you know we like ribs at our house, so this may finally be the recipe to put me over the top and buy the book already. out of curiosity, what was the final word to the butcher? cut the ribs into two or three inch segments?

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  4. I love how you contrasted the colors, that must have tasted fabulous! I must admit I skipped this week as I went into sticker shock at the price of the ribs!! I think maybe I’m more of a peasant food gal? ; ) (Turning necessity into virtue, here!)

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  5. I absolutely ADORE short ribs! I just can’t get enough of them. Tom Colicchio serves short ribs at Craft that are just to die for, by the way. I honestly never thought of adding bleu cheese to sweet potatoes so I’m going to file that away in the memory bank for future reference. Thanks for the great post!

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  6. I love great short ribs and these seem to fit that profile. I’m looking for dishes to use my crockpot for and this also seems to fit. I had hoped to participate but ran head into RSVP Redux; you know which one I had to choose! Look and sound fabulous.

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  7. Finally! Someone’s ribs look like mine (at least from the meat ‘shape’ standpoint)! Your pictures are awesome, and I’m definitely trying the blue cheese sweet mashers.
    @ Mr. Neil – Thanks for the great write-up on the wine selection. We used for the braise a Malbec/Syrah blend (a bargain at $7) and went later for an Argentinean blend.

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  8. Short ribs and I have a special relationship…. and I would have hid them, too, but I don’t know if I would have given them to the hubz… those look too good to be shared. Sorry Mr. Neil. 🙂

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  9. I’ll be they were great with Sweet Potatoes! Your photos are terrific! We loved the aroma throughout our house, too! I’d never made anything like this, but certainly will again!

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  11. What on earth did we do before the tiny computers in our pockets? I have done my fair share of googling in the store! 🙂 Glad these turned out so well and that you were able to hide a couple for your photos! 🙂

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  12. So beautiful and I loved your idea to serve these over a puree. I put them all out on a buffet platter for my big group but they were so good that I will make them again and when I do I will plate them just like you did here. Great job!

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  13. I also agree that every single ingredient mentioned is one I love. And I’ve got to try the sweet potato/blue cheese (and cream!) combo. I even love malbec. Yum. And my god, does the picture look incredible.

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  14. Fabulous shots – I love how you styled your plates (and chuckled that you had to hide two for photos !) Nana and I enjoyed making these and agree that they were on the short list of the best so far. I know that I have no made meat that ended up this tender – what a nice surprise for me. Hello “braising” 🙂 Great post.

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  15. Oh Wow.., the flavours in this sounds incredible. Your making me wish for winter as this one has hearty written all over it. Love the colour combo too… well done, love it. 🙂

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  16. Mardi
    The blue cheese in the mash is intriguing. I’ll have a talk to your mother about it and see about getting a taste of it. I think the blue cheese would work better within a sweet potato mash than a straight-out potato mash… but either way, I wanna try it. Good idea. Thanks

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  17. Mardi, Sweet potato puree! Schweeeet! I must say that the cooks in the ffwD club are most talented and innovative with these weekly recipes. The kitchen is a great place to show our creative sides using ingredients that work well together or just using what we already have in our pantries.
    Thank you for a lovely post.
    bonnie

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  18. I laughed when you said you had to hide a few ribs just to get a picture! I have had to do that so many times! Im glad you were able to sneak a few away!
    Im not a big beef lover , but liked these ribs enough to eat one!

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  19. Just for the record everyone, I KNEW where they were hidden.

    Us blog-spouses aren’t as gullible as you may think… 😉

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  20. Mardi, I love, love, love the idea of serving these fantastic ribs with the sweet potato puree (blue cheese added? I’m there!)
    I have done so many dishes this winter with polenta and sweet potatoes, and still cannot get enough. There is always the next time, because we all loved the ribs – and it was my first time, as well.
    i cooked my ribs uncut, and cut them later, but your photo is so beautiful with one, solitary piece of meat – so rustic and comforting.

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  21. I am a huge fan of short ribs and make them whenever it gets cold enough here to really enjoy them!! You are right – the ribs (and just about any braised dish) are better when you eat them the day after they are cooked – it really allows the flavors to settle and mellow!!

    Can’t wait to try Dorie’s version!!

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  22. I’ve been slacking lately with my FFwD and I need to go back and make these. Growing up in a Kosher home, I didn’t get to enjoy pork ribs, although now I do. So I grew up only knowing beef ribs and these look perfect as most of Dorie’s recipes end up being!

    Reply

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