I love braising meat.
I love inhaling the fragrances that bubble up from my mortar as I pound or grind down herbs and spices. I love the crepitating din of the large hunks of meat sizzling on my hot cast iron pan. I love the satisfying sizzle of alcohol as it hits the pan, the dramatic decrescendo from the ferocious bubbles to the gentle lapping against the sides of the pan, and the quiet but sudden tsunami of aromas that flood your head, saturating your neurons with pleasure and yearning. I love throwing ingredients into broth, with feigned insouciance and maniacal satisfaction, like a witch creating the magnum opus of her magical potions. And if course, I love sticking my snout into the pot as it finishes cooking, the disintegrating meat bathing in the glistening sauce beneath the clouds of fragrant steam.
At that moment, I can’t help but grinning, my quality of life propelled by the aromatic meditation that all it takes, really, to create this miracle of alchemy, is heat and water.
4 Tips for Creating a Fabulous Stew or Braise
1. Quality Matters
It is much easier to end up with a show-stopping dish if you start out with delicious ingredients. First and foremost, meat from an animal that has lived a healthy life will not only be better for your own health, but likely also taste much better.
For browning meat and frying aromatics, use stable oils that aren’t prone to oxidation. Saturated fats are best (lard, tallow, refined coconut oil); monounsaturated fats are next best (avocado, virgin olive oil). Use fresh herbs whenever possible, and where appropriate (certain herbs are better dried). Buy whole spices and grind them yourself, in a mortar or, if you have one, a spice grinder. As a test, do a side-by-side tasting of pre-ground nutmeg and freshly-ground nutmeg. The latter is sweet and fragrant. The former is dull and bitter. Which one would you rather sprinkle onto a frothy cup of milk?
2. Choose Ingredients that Cover a Variety of Tastes
I am fond of the practice found in the cuisines of the Far East, originating in principles of Chinese Medicine, of balancing the “Five Flavors”. Their five flavors (sweet, salty, sour, bitter and pungent/spicy) don’t quite correspond to the five basic tastes recognized by science today (spiciness is not a registered by taste buds, but by pain receptors in our mouths, whereas pungency has more to do with aroma and taste), but if you replace the latter with umami (savoriness), it works quite well as a guiding principle to create stellar braises. Of course, nothing prevents you from adding as much spiciness to your recipe as your tongue desires!
Sweet: apple, cooked onions, balsamic vinegar, molasses
Sour: balsamic vinegar, apple, cider, cranberry
Salty: Salt, soy sauce
Bitter: cider, herbs, molasses
Umami: pork bone broth, molasses, soy sauce
3. Brown, Baby, Brown
Braising relies on gentle heat, water, and generous amounts of time to transform tough cuts of meat, rich in connective tissue, into luxuriously tender, collagen-rich bites. Because water evaporates at 100°C (212°F), the heat used in cooking methods that depend on water are never hot enough to achieve the chemical reactions associated with the delicious brown surfaces of pan-fried, roasted, or grilled meats. This transformation, called the Maillard Reaction, starts occurring at temperature above 140°C (285°F) between the amino acids and reducing sugars present in food. Although we recognize the Maillard Reaction by the characteristic browning it creates on the surface of food, its most interesting aspect is surely the plethora of new aromas and flavors that are created through this process. In order for your braise to benefit from these enticing flavors, it is necessary to expose the meat to hot, dry heat at some point in the cooking process. For this recipe, I browned the meat on a cast iron pan before placing it in its broth. The other option, especially useful if you plan to marinate the meat before braising it, would be to brown the meat in a hot oven at the end of the cooking process, as I do in this recipe for pressure cooker Korean ribs.
4. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Booze
Because alcohol molecules are highly volatile, they swiftly carry the aromatic compounds they contain to the olfactory receptors in our noses. The same can be said of the aromas in the foods we combine with alcohol. This “volatility effect” enhances our perception of the aromas in our food, and thus our enjoyment of it. most of what we perceive as flavor comes from olfaction–what we do with our nose–rather than gustation–what we do with our tongue. Popular science places this number between 75 and 95%, but there is no empirical data to support such a quantitative analysis. Suffice it to say that it is more smell than taste, and therefore anything that can enhance the smell of food will increase the pleasure we derive from it.
As cookbook authors David Joachim and Andrew Schloss explain in an article for Fine Cooking, “food also benefits from alcohol’s second remarkable quality: It bonds with both fat and water molecules. In this way, alcohol bridges the gap between our aroma receptors (which respond only to molecules that can be dissolved in fat) and food (which consists primarily of water). This is crucial, because most of the great “flavor” in food comes from aromas in the nose rather than tastes in the mouth”.
Avoid bottles labelled as “cooking wine” or “cooking alcohol”. Use something you wouldn’t mind drinking (see tip #1).
Joëlle
Serves 4-6
Juicy, tender threads of pork braised in a rich broth packed with autumn flavours. Serve it in a roasted squash for a festive presentation!
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Ingredients
- 2 lbs pork shoulder ("pork butt")
- Salt
- White pepper
- 1 tbsp lard (or other cooking fat)
- 1 cooking onions, finely diced
- 1 small apple (or half of a large apple), thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup cider
- 1 cup pork broth
- 1/2 cup fresh cranberries
- 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1 tbsp molasses
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 3 bay leaves
- 1-2 sprigs thyme
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- 1 tbsp ground sage
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 large kabocha squash
- 2 tsp avocado oil
- 1/2 cup hazelnuts, peel on
- 2 tbsp grass-fed butter
- 1/2 cup sage leaves, coarsely chopped
- 2 tsp shio koji or a pinch of salt
- Thin strips of lemon zest
- Fresh sage leaves
Instructions
- Generously salt pork shoulder, preferably hours before cooking. Store in the fridge until about 1 hour before cooking.
- Heat a cast iron pan to medium-high (or set your Instant Pot to Saute mode).
- Season pork shoulder with white pepper on all sides
- When the pan is hot, melt lard and spread around the surface.
- Brown pork shoulder on all sides (about 5-6 minutes per side). Set browned meat aside on cutting board.
- Add onion and apple slices to the pot and saute for about 3 minutes, or until the onions are translucent and limp.
- While the onion is cooking, cut pork shoulder into large cubes (roughly 6cm³).
- Deglaze the pot with cider, and pour its contents into the Instant Pot liner.
- And add the rest of the broth and seasoning ingredients to the liner. Mix until well combined.
- Put the pork shoulder cubes into the pot.
- wist the lid onto the Instant Pot. Making sure the Steam Release Handle is turned to the Sealing position, set the Pressure Cook program to cook for 30 minutes on high pressure, with natural release (for at least 15 minutes)
- While the meat is cooking, preheat oven to 400°F.
- Cut the tops of the squashes (I used a star pattern). Scrape the inside with a spoon to remove the seeds and pith. Rub the squashes (inside and outside) with avocado oil until fully coated.
- Place them on a baking tray, and bake for 30 minutes, until almost cooked through.
- Spread hazelnuts on another baking sheet and toast in the oven for 10 minutes, or until the skins darken and start to peel off (this can be done at the same time as the squashes are cooking). Keep an eye on them, as they can easily burn.
- Once the hazelnuts are cool enough, chop them in half.
- Bring a small skillet to medium heat. Melt butter and mix in sage leaves. Fry for a few minutes, until the sage leaves are crispy and the butter is slightly brown. Add toasted hazelnut halves and mix until they are coated with brown butter. Mix in salt or shio koji. Remove from skillet.
- When the pressure has been fully released from the Instant Pot, remove the lid and transfer the chunks of pork to a large mixing bowl with a slotted spoon.
- Set the Instant Pot back to Saute mode to reduce the sauce for 15 to 20 minutes, and preheat the oven to 450°F
- Shred the pork with two forks, and stuff the pork into the squashes. Spoon about a quarter cup of the thickened sauce into the squashes, over the pork.
- Pour the rest of the sauce into a serving dish to use as a gravy over the meat for extra flavour.
- Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
- Garnish with a bit of the hazelnut sage mixture, strips of lemon zest and fresh sage leaves.
- Serve with the remaining sauce and brown butter sage and toasted hazelnuts.
Calories
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Carbs
Protein
References
Joachim, D., & Schloss, A. (2003, March). Alcohol’s Role in Cooking. Fine Cooking, (104), 28–29.
Nosrat, S., MacNaughton, W., & Pollan, M. (2017). Salt, fat, acid, heat: mastering the elements of good cooking. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd.
Spence, C. (2015). Just how much of what we taste derives from the sense of smell? Flavour, 4(1). doi: 10.1186/s13411-015-0040-2
