Recipe: Braised Short Ribs With Gravy (SCD/GAPS)

What better dish for a cold, stormy winter’s day than braised short ribs! This is a savory food beyond comfort. One of the more fatty cuts, when it comes from a grassfed animal, the fat is full of beneficial CLA, zinc and magnesium. Humans can’t eat the grass or forage — the cows do it for us and they are able to process the nutrients in the grass so that we may benefit from it without all the toxins and inhibitors common to many plant foods.

Short ribs have a lot of collagenous and gellatinous material. When cooked slowly in water all the molecules that nourish the joints and mucous membranes (especially the intestinal lining) are released. Some people cut away all the connective fibers, thinking it to be fat or gristle. Don’t do that! Eat all the fibers off the bone — get your kids to do the same. Every bit of that gristle is full of glucosamine and chondroitin. People pay a lot of money for pills that supplement these nutrients. Pills are artificially synthesized in a laboratory and much harder to assimilate than when slow cooked and enjoyed in a delicious meal.

Cook the meat the day before you are going to eat it and store over night in a large bowl. The fat will rise to the top and you can skim it off, put it in a jar, refrigerate and use for cooking other things. There will be plenty of fat left in the meat, for your meal.

Braised Short Ribs

Ingredients

• 2 – 3 pounds of short ribs from a grassfed animal
• 1 large onion peeled and sliced
• 3 – 4 stalks celery sliced (organic if possible — this is high on the list of the dirty dozen)
• 4 – 5 carrots peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces
• 4 cloves garlic sliced
• Bay leaf
• sea salt (where to buy salt)
• peppercorns (10)
• 1 cup beef stock
• 1  cup water

Equipment

• 5 – 6 gallon dutch oven (where to buy a dutch oven)
• knives (where to buy high quality knives)

Instructions for the ribs

1. On top of the stove, heat the dutch oven to medium, melt some tallow or lard and gently brown all side of the short ribs
2. You may have to do this in sections until all the meat is browned
3. Hold the meat aside in a large bowl
4. There should be plenty of fat in the pan — add all the vegetables except the garlic and saute until somewhat soft
5. At the end, for a minute or two, add the garlic and let it warm up
6. Add the meat back in on top of the vegetables
7. Add the beef stock, the water and the bay leaf and any other herbs you may like
8. Cover the dutch oven and put inside the stove at 325 degrees F for 3 — 4 hours
9. Remove from oven and eat immediately or refrigerate for the next day

Instructions for the gravy

1. Remove all the meat from the dutch oven
2. Put a strainer over a large pot
3. Pour the gravy into the pot through the strainer
4. Take about half the vegetables (I usually pick out the pepper corns and the celery and discard them) and put back in the pot
5. Using an immersion blender, blend the vegetables with the liquid gravy
6. This will thicken the gravy without using any starches or flours and it tastes great
7. Put the vegetables that you saved, back into the gravy
8. You now have a thick and savory gravy with vegetable pieces (you may want to add salt to the gravy or at the table)
9. When refrigerated, this gravy will gel due to all the collagen and gelatin in the bones and the meat

This post is shared at: Sunday School, Seasonal Celebration, Sugar-Free Sunday, Monday Mania, Real Food 101, Melt in Mouth Monday, Homestead Barnhop, Tasty Tuesday Tidbits, Tempt my Tummy Tuesday, Made from Scratch Tuesday, Tasty Tuesday Naptime, Slightly Indulgent Tuesday, Hearth & Soul Hop, Traditional Tuesday, Tasty Tuesday 33, What’s Cooking Wednesday, Sustainable Ways, Gluten-Free Wednesday, Healthy 2Day, Allergy Free Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday, Cast Party Wednesday, These Chicks Cooked, Tastastic, Simple Lives Thursday, Fresh Bites Friday, Freaky Friday, Foodie Friday, Fight Back Friday, Friday Food, Hunk a Meat Monday