How do I braise meat?

Braising works by slowly converting the connective tissue in hard-working muscle into gelatine. That is why it makes shin, shoulder and cheek extraordinary and does nothing good for fillet. Choosing the right cut is most of the technique.

What you'll need

• Tough cut of meat
• Heavy casserole with a lid
• Stock or wine
• Onion, carrot, celery
• Oven

Step by step

1. Choose a hard-working cut.Shin, shoulder, brisket, cheek, oxtail, lamb neck. Cheap, full of connective tissue, and exactly what braising is for. Lean cuts will only go dry.
2. Dry the meat and brown it properly.Pat dry, season, and brown in batches in a hot pan until deeply coloured. This is where most of the flavour is made — pale meat gives a pale, flat braise.
3. Soften the aromatics in the same pan.Onion, carrot and celery, until soft. They build the base and pick up the browning from the meat.
4. Deglaze with wine or stock.Scrape everything off the base and let it reduce briefly. Do not leave that flavour in the pan.
5. Return the meat and add liquid halfway up.Not covered — this is braising, not boiling. Partly exposed meat browns on top while the base stews, which is the point.
6. Bring to a bare simmer, then cover and move to a low oven.Around 140-150°C. An oven surrounds the pot evenly; a hob heats only the base and is much easier to overshoot.
7. Cook for two to three hours, and judge by feel.It is ready when a fork twists the meat apart with no resistance. Time is a guide; texture is the test.
8. Rest, skim the fat, and reduce the sauce if needed.Braises improve overnight. Chilling makes the fat trivially easy to lift off, and reducing the liquid concentrates it.

Tips

• Make it the day before. Braises genuinely improve, and skimming cold fat is far easier than hot.
• If the meat is tough after two hours, it needs longer, not hotter. Undercooked braise is the most common error and the easiest to fix.
• Keep the liquid at a bare tremble. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fibres and makes the meat stringy.

Common mistakes

• Using a lean cut — There is no connective tissue to convert to gelatine, so it simply dries out over hours.
• Boiling instead of simmering — Aggressive heat squeezes the fibres and gives stringy, dry meat even in a wet pot.

Questions people ask