Shin Beef Casserole

I love slow cooking and I’m a huge fan of casseroles, stews and tagines, where beef, lamb or chicken is cooked long and slow with plenty of veggies and herbs and/or spices.

My go-to beef cut for slow cooking has to be shin beef, called gravy beef in Australia. I cook with it a lot, loving the tenderness and flavour of the meat.

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe from the vault. I have cooked variations many times over, but I thought I would put Jamie’s original version on the blog again for those wanting a great comfort food stew that could easily be served as a ragu with pappardelle pasta.

The original recipe comes from “Cook With Jamie”, and here is the link to the website recipe:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/beef-recipes/melt-in-your-mouth-shin-stew

Here is my “tweaked” recipe. The most significant change I made is to lower the oven temperature to 150 degrees C. I think long, slow cooking is the way to go with this recipe. (When I blogged this in 2014 I suggested 160 degrees, but 150 degrees is better).

Ingredients

Lug of olive oil

6 eschallots, peeled and roughly chopped

6 baby carrots, trimmed and used whole

2 cloves garlic chopped

A few sprigs of fresh rosemary

1 bay leaf

750g quality shin of beef, trimmed and cut into 5cm pieces

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 tbs flour

1 x 400g tinned tomatoes

1/2 bottle red wine

Method

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees C.  In a heavy-bottomed casserole, heat a lug of olive oil and gently fry the eschallots, carrots, garlic and herbs for 5 minutes until softened slightly. Meanwhile, toss the pieces of beef in a little seasoned flour, shaking off any excess. Add the meat to the casserole  and stir everything together, then add the tomatoes, wine and a pinch of salt and pepper. Gently bring to the boil, cover with a double-thickness piece of aluminum foil and a lid and place in your preheated oven for 3 hours or until the beef is meltingly tender and can be broken up with a spoon. Taste and check the seasoning, remove the rosemary sprigs and bay leaf.

Serve with pappardelle, polenta, mash or rice.