Foundations 5: Braising

Slow and steady wins the race

Hello and welcome back to Foundations!

The idea behind Foundations is simple; I want to teach you what I know about home cooking. These are the fundamentals, the building blocks, the stuff that once you understand it, will allow you to become the kind of cook who can open a cupboard or fridge and make something delicious without using a recipe. If you haven’t already, you might like to read the introductory piece explaining this project in more detail here.

This week, we’re talking all about one of my favourite cooking methods - braising.

I’m trying something new here and adding a voiceover, which you can listen to a bit like a podcast, if that’s your thing. Let me know what you think!

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I remember the first time I lit a fire, my stepdad taught me. I knelt on the soft, musty- sweet dirt and tried to light a match, small hands stained ochre by old leaves, one damp knee soaking up dew from the forest floor like a cocktail napkin under a cold glass.

The process goes like this - First, you find the right place to build your fire; flat ground, away from high wind and anything flammable like long grass. Next, in ascending order, you need: ignition, in the form of matches or a lighter, then tinder (usually wood shavings or cotton wool), followed by small kindling which will take a flame from the tinder, and finally, a series of progressively larger pieces of wood. The wood must be dry, appropriately sized and arranged in such a way that the flame passes from the smaller twigs to the larger logs with enough airflow to burn brightly, but not so much that it blows out.

The second thing he taught me is to leave the fire alone. As an 11 year old with a stick penknifed into a spear perfect for poking fires, this is easier said than done. But a fire, providing it has the right ingredients and structure to begin with, will burn best with minimal intervention. A braise is like a fire; once everything is in place and the process is underway, you need distraction from it, not attention for it. Frying and grilling and baking are sharp and precise but the technique of braising is rounded at the edges, soft and forgiving. What a braise usually needs is time, and time is best left uninterrupted.

What Is Braising?

Braising is a two part process, and it’s easy. The ingredients are first seared in a hot, dry pan (usually a big heavy one) with some fat until well browned, then cooked gently in liquid until tender. A good braise will create a harmony between the ingredients being braised and the liquid they are braised in. Unlike a soup, the ingredients remain separate entities, but after sometime together they begin to share a personality, like twins in matching outfits.

‘One-pan’ cooking is an overused buzzword and method that promises brilliance from minimal effort, and anything which promises brilliance from minimal effort should be treated skeptically. There are excellent one-pan recipes, and there are also recipes that ruin two good things by cooking them together for the sake of washing up an extra saucepan. Is it worth it? Pass the sponge, I’ll let you decide. A braise is rarely a true one-pan-wonder, but it’s pretty close. It usually just needs a carbohydrate (cooked in a different pan) to take it across the finish line.

Around The World In 80 Braise.

Jules Verne would’ve eaten braised duck. Canard de Challans au Muscadet Nantais is a dish native to Verne’s birthplace, Nantes, in which local Challans duck is braised with Muscadet, the region’s dry, mineral white wine of great acidity. The best cooks add raisins (made from the same grapes as the wine) towards the end of cooking, which will partially rehydrate in a combination of duck juices and cooked wine. Just think about that for a little moment.

Although ‘braise’ in English comes from the French ‘braiser’, braising is not French, everyone does it. A lot of things you like to eat are probably braises, let’s have a look at some examples.

Beef Brisket (牛腩) is an example of lou mei, a whole range of Cantonese dishes in which the main ingredient (in this case beef brisket, but also pork belly, duck and even duck flippers (鴨掌)) is braised in master stock. Master stock is a never ending broth, continuously simmered, skimmed and topped up as ingredients are cooked in it, taking on flavour from the stock and giving their own back. Other parts of China, and Japan, also cook with master stock. Otafuku restaurant has had its batch rolling since 1945.

Chicken Adobo (adobong manók) is probably the most well-known example of the Philippine cooking method ‘adobo’ in which chicken, pork, beef, duck or a variety of vegetables are braised by browning and then cooking with vinegar (usually palm or cane vinegar) soy sauce, garlic and other aromatics.

Sudado Di Pollo is a Columbian dish of chicken braised with potatoes, onions and tomatoes. You find lots of examples of chicken cooked similarly to this in other parts of South America but also in the Mediterranean too, often with ingredients like olives or wine.

Laban Immo is a Levantine dish of lamb or beef cooked with onions and served in a yoghurt sauce with dried mint. I’m lucky enough to have eaten this cooked by a real Lebanese grandma, my friend Joe’s teta, if I can get her recipe for you I will.

Daube is the generic name for a whole range of braised beef dishes in France, the best known of which is Bœuf en Daube à la Provençale from the South, in which beef is braised with wine, herbs and vegetables. The famous Bœuf Bourguignon then, is really a daube but with the distinction that it uses red wine from Burgundy. The recipe below is a kind of daube.

A-Daube-O - In the native language of Provençe, Occitan, which is also spoken in parts of North West Italy and North East Spain, ‘adòba’ is the word for a marinade, which is what gives daube its name. Occitan ‘adòba’ probably comes from Catalan ‘adobe’, itself from the Old French ‘adober’, and became the Spanish word for a marinade, adobo. When the Spanish colonised the Philippines in the 16th Century, they gave this name to the Philippine dish described above, due to its similarities with the Spanish method, but they are distinct and separate. The Philippine adobo is indigenous to the Philippines and long pre-dates the arrival of the Spanish, despite what some of them might tell you.

Lancashire Hotpot is an English contribution to the cannon of braises. James Martin’s recipe on the BBC begins “This famous lamb stew topped with sliced potatoes should be on the menu at every British pub”. Maybe James Martin has never been to a pub. Pub-like simulations in Richmond and Surrey where men wear jeans and sheuxs serve Lancashire Hotpot (and ‘truffled mac ‘n’ cheese’, ew) but a proper pub, redolent with old-carpet, fruit machines and inebriation, shouldn’t have a menu that extends far beyond pork scratchings and peanuts.¹

Lancashire Hotpot (serves 4) begins with 100g of beef dripping and also includes a kilo of lamb, a kilo of potatoes, some onions and carrot. The aromatic element of this dish… 2 bay leaves. 400 years of ruthless spice-trade colonialism and not even a twist of pepper. The jokes write themselves.

To be honest, English food isn’t even liked in England. The two most popular cuisines in the UK are Chinese and Indian, with around ten thousand Chinese and a staggering eighteen thousand Indian restaurants spread across our fair isle. A Trip Advisor search for ‘English restaurant’ in Mumbai suggests the gastronomic attraction is not mutual. The first result is The Canary which serves traditional British classics like burgers and pizza. Next up is the British Brewing Company, which also serves pizza. A search for English restaurants in New Delhi is no better - in first place is Pickwick which serves… Indian food. Second? KFC.

The Formula

Back to braising. Braising is a combination cooking method that uses both wet and dry heat, something which I covered in detail in Roasting. It’s applicable to a really wide range of ingredients, and is the ideal technique when you’re looking to achieve a deep, tender ‘melt in the mouth’ type dish. As with the other recipes in this series, once you understand the general components that make up the technique, you’ll be able to braise anything. Let’s break it down.

Meat is the focus of a lot of traditional braising recipes, in short because it’s such a good way to cook meat. Now, a prime-cut, a well cooked ribeye or sirloin (well cooked meaning cooked well, which here means rare) is a wonderful thing. But braising comes into its own with tougher, cheaper cuts of meat. Pan-fry a chunk of brisket like a steak and you’ll end up with something almost as tasty as an inner tube. But all of the sinew and connective tissue that make quick-cooking these cheaper cuts impossible is the secret to a good braise. The tough and chewy collagen is gelatinised by the combination of low, slow heat and moisture, and the result is a meltingly tender, blancmange like caress of beef (or lamb, pork, chicken…).

By the same logic, the lean, expensive, sinew-free fillet that lends itself to a quick sear is totally wasted on a braise. The lack of fat and gristle, prized qualities when making something like a tartare, is the downfall of a slow-cook; becoming dry and tired regardless of how much you spend on it, like a prime footballer transferring to the Saudi league.

I’ve talked mostly here about beef, because it’s my favourite meat to braise and is what we’re using in the recipe below. But here are other good cuts to look out for when braising:

Beef - skirt, brisket, chuck, leg and flank.

Lamb - shank, neck and shoulder.

Pork - ribs, butt, shoulder and belly.

Chicken - Thighs, legs, wings (the brown meat).

Vegetables can play two roles in a braise. In a meat braise, they mostly perform a supporting roll, adding freshness and flavour (especially to the braising liquid) in much the same way they do in a stock. If you’ve ever made stock and then tasted the veg afterwards, you’ll notice it has almost no flavour, because it has all been leached out into the liquid, which is the goal. Common veg for a supporting roll are onion, carrots, celery, garlic and mushrooms.

Vegetables can also be the star of the show in a braise. Anything that’s a bit hardy, something on the firmer side, can braise beautifully. With vegetables, the process is exactly the same as meat - brown off in fat and then cook in liquid - but the whole thing is a lot quicker.

Some of my favourite veggies to braise are carrots, leeks, cabbage, artichokes and, the best of all, fennel, which becomes golden and tender and has its aniseed flavours tamed to a soft sweetness.

Liquid is often added in two forms to a braise - acidic and functional. Wine, vinegar, lemon juice and beer can all provide an acidic element to balance the richness of the dish, whilst stock (or just water) provide the ‘functional’ element by bulking out the liquid and allow the braise to work by semi-submerging whatever you’re cooking. It’s also a reduction of those liquids, flavoured by whatever you cook in them, that becoming the sauce at the end.

Aromatics come in lots of shapes and sizes depending on the dish and the cuisine it comes from. We discussed something similar in stock. The recipe below is rooted in French-style braising, and the flavours reflect that. Like other European braised dishes, common aromatics are soft herbs like parsley, thyme, rosemary and bay leaves. Spices can also be added in the form of a stick of cinnamon, cloves or black peppercorns.

I like to add herbs as a bouquet garni, which simply means tying them altogether with a few twists of string (see video). This makes them easy to remove at the end and avoids stray woody thyme stalks floating around your dish. If you’re adding spices, like those mentioned above, a good method is to make a little sachet by wrapping them in some muslin cloth to keep everything together. It works a bit like a teabag for spices.

The Pan. Braising always happens in a sealed environment, which is a sciency sounding way of saying a pan with a lid on. This is important because it traps the cooking liquid and creates a moist, steamy atmosphere (get the Barry White on). A tight-fitting lid is important because it stops the steam escaping and slows the reduction of the liquid right down. The best pans for braising are heavy, enamelled cast iron because they cook with very even heat across the whole surface and can go from the hob into the oven. I use Le Creuset.

Heat. You will always start out with your pan on the hob, to achieve the necessary browning of ingredients before liquid is added. After that, you can remain on the hob, or transfer the pan to a low oven. There are no strict rules here, but there are a few things worth considering.

With quicker braises like chicken or vegetables, I usually leave the pan on the hob at its lowest setting and just stir occasionally. Transferring your dish to the oven will mean that you’re cooking with very even, indirect heat. If you’re doing a larger piece of meat which is going to take a good few hours, this is the better option. Not only is the cooking more even, but it’s also handsfree, and keeps your hob clear for preparing starters, sides etc.

A Bit On The Side. This recipe is served with polenta, which is a popular pairing with braised meat in Northern Italy. In France, mashed potato or ‘pommes purée’ is common with dishes like Boeuf Bourguignon. You can really do whatever you like. Rice, boiled potatoes, cassava, noodles or even just a few hunks of buttered bread all work well.

Why I like This Recipe

There are four key differences between this recipe and most recipes for French style meat, wine & stock braises. The first is that we deglaze the pan twice, once after