braised short ribs

Step 1: Wash and slash the short ribs. Salt liberally.



Step 2: Add water just to cover and put on high heat. Watch it to see when it just starts to boil and the meat juuuust barely starts to cook and turn slightly brown. You'll see blood seeping through the marrow and float to the top in gross gray grainy blobs. Remove from heat then dump out the water and wash in cold water. My mom told me to do this and I was like, "Huh?" I think now that it was to wash away all the gray blobs of what used to be blood and to remove some of the fat as well, as it floats to the top and congeals in the cold water.



Step 3: Into the pot that now only holds the meat, add some potatoes and onions, and turnip too, if you have it handy. This is where the recipe became frustrating because getting a recipe from my mom is impossible. I was instructed to add "a little" soy sauce, "some" mirin, "a few" lightly crushed garlic, "a bit of" sesame oil, "some" ginger, and "a little" sugar or corn syrup. I appeared to have done ok proportion-wise, but I didn't use enough of anything. I should have doubled or tripled the amounts I used. I also used too much water. I think you are supposed to only add enough water (or broth) to come up maybe a centimeter or so on the side of the pot, but I added enough to almost cover. This caused the dish to become more of a stew rather than a braised dish. Dang.



Step 4: Bring the stew to just below a boil and lower to a simmer. After maybe 20 minutes, I added some carrots. Well, the carrots are really optional. My mom never uses them. I simmered on low for about 1.5 hours and found that I need to go for at least another hour, which I did. It was fairly tender, but it really should have gone for another hour or two. So I would advise cooking for roughly 3-4 hours for maximum enjoyment.

My mom cooks this in the pressure cooker. In the pressure cooker, you are pretty much done in 20-30 minutes and are guaranteed meltingly delicious meat and potatoes. Curses. I should get one.