Beef Short Rib Sous Vide

Short ribs are one of my favourite cuts of beef. Like the nearby brisket, they come a part of the animal with a great balance of muscle and fat, so they taste great but require low, slow cooking in order to break down the connective tissue and get them nice and tender, which makes sous vide the ideal choice of cooking method.

Like many other things food-related and otherwise, our American cousins use the same words as we do for beef cuts, but use them to refer to different parts of the animal; and in Chinese or Korean cooking short ribs are often cut across the bone to create a strip of meat with multiple bones in. Here I’m using English cut short ribs. A single bone with a good solid lump of meat on.

These ribs go great with a really butter mash, and garlic fried savoy cabbage.

Ingredients

  • Beef short ribs, 1 or 2 per person
  • Salt & pepper

Directions

Heat the sous vide bath to 65degC.

Meanwhile remove the ribs from their packaging, pat them dry, and liberally coat with salt and pepper.

Either vacuum seal the ribs if your kitchen has the appropriate toys, or use the water displacement method to seal them into a ziplock bag.

Put the ribs in the water bath for 18 to 24 hours.

When the ribs are done, heat your oven to its highest possible temperature.

Take the ribs out of the bath, leave them to cool a little, and remove them from their packaging. If you want to serve these ribs whole, on the bone, be careful at this point because they'll be so well cooked that the bone can easily slip out.

Put the ribs on a baking tray and put them in the oven to brown on the outside - this will take about 10 minutes or so.

Because of the cooking time and the type of joint this is, the liquid from the sous vide bag is probably a little funky and gamey, so it's not to everyone's tastes, but you might like to reduce it and make a gravy - I usually do.

Either serve the ribs on the bone, or slice them into decent chunks to show off their glossy pink interior, and serve.