Crock Pot Oxtail Stew

Erhmahgerd sterw!  So yeah, wow, it’s been a while, but here we are back again.

Yesterday we made a pretty good meal (really, to serve as lunches at work) from some of the meat provided to us as part of M.F. Dulock’s “meat club.”  On the chopping block: oxtail.  If you don’t know what oxtail is (and admittedly, we didn’t either)….it’s exactly what it sounds like -- the appendage used by bovines to swat at flies on their buttocks.  ;)  There’s more meat on there than you’d think, though, and it turns out it’s great for braising and/or stewing.

Here’s the easy recipe (parsed down from one we found online, and amended slightly to our tastes)….

• 1.65 pounds oxtail, disjointed (this just means chopped up into singular vertebral chunks)
• Pork fat that was leftover in a pan where we had cooked breakfast bacon that day
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 cup beef stock
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 1/4 cup tomato sauce
• 6 peppercorns
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 dried red chile pepper, chopped (some, but not all, seeds removed)
• 3 whole cloves
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1/2 tablespoon chopped parsley
• 3 potatoes, cut in chunks
• salt and pepper

Brown the oxtail pieces on all sides in the cast iron skillet with the pork fat, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.  Add the onions and garlic (with a bit more salt and pepper) and cook about 5 minutes more until the onions start to become translucent.

Put the potatoes and carrots in the bottom of crock pot, and season with salt and pepper.

Add the browned oxtails, onions, garlic, and remaining ingredients.

Cover and cook on low 6 hours or until the meat is easily pulled off (or falling off) the bones.

Quite delicious, super easy, and the house smelled fantastic all day, right from moment the meat went into the pork fat.  The weirdest part is that once you’ve gotten the meat off the bone of “normal” cuts, you are used to what the bones will look like.  Here, you end up with vertebrae.  Freaky.