Curiosity often drives what I cook and this Italian Oxtail Stew post arose from my preoccupation with learning how to prepare unusual meats. Watching Andrew Zimmern eat off-cuts and internal organs, or “variety meats” as they are euphemistically called in America, for years touting them as delicious has repeatedly piqued my curiosity and presents me with a challenge. Since I agree in principle with Zimmern’s assertion that ethically humans should consume the entire animal they slaughter for food, I want to overcome my reluctance to prepare and eat unfamiliar meat by-products and off-cuts.
I am not a novice to off-cuts and certain offal. I include chicken, calf or pork livers in pâtés and terrines and make aspics from pork trotters. I enjoy sausages encased in natural intestine casings and head cheese. Giblet gravy is a standard on our Thanksgiving table. I savor fried chicken gizzards in American soul food, tender slices of beef heart (anticuchos) in Peru and have eaten fried pig skin (chicharrón) in Mexico. But I, and many other people, are reluctant to try sweetbreads (even though considered a princely dish by French chefs), brain, kidneys, pig’s ears, hog jowls, tongues, tripe, chicken feet, spleen, stomach, shin, intestines, liver, pancreas, lungs, kidneys, udders and tails. It’s the appearance of and the idea of eating organs and by-products that is off-putting and makes me squeamish about cooking with them.
So how to expand my repertoire? Why are these undesirable meats eaten at all?
I turned to history for guidance. Historical evidence shows that early humans weren’t picky. To survive they consumed all edible parts of an animal. As ancient societies developed, socio-economic factors began to play an important role in who cooked with entrails and who did not and access to desirable food was stratified by social class. Henry Notaker, in A History of Cookbooks*, notes that “The association of different social groups with particular culinary practices was…established by the Late Middle Ages…” In fact, in some societies, which cuts of meat, which preparations and what quantity was to be consumed by specific classes were codified in law. Best cuts of meat were a privilege of higher ranks, but special decrees often set out what different noble ranks and lower classes could eat. Uniformly throughout the world, offal, grains and potatoes were relegated to the poor.
Offal and other off-cuts were an established part of American cooking for centuries. Early settlers in America ate the entire animal, whether hunted or domestically raised. Until recently, American cookbooks published, whether written by home cooks or professional chefs,* featured recipes for numerous internal organs and off-cuts. But despite a long tradition of cooking offal, it is unclear why such cooking fell from favor with American home cooks.
A significant factor seems to be the general unavailability of off-cuts and organ meat. With the decline of small neighborhood meat markets and the growth of mass grocery stores after World War II, grocery store butchers limited the market offerings to widely demanded meats and internal organs. Off-cuts and organs in less demand became difficult to find and home cooks forgot how to cook them. While in America the government has never mandated who eats what, here too the best meats go to those with social status or wealth and off-cuts and offal is the food of the urban and rural poor and ethnic immigrants whose taste has not Americanized and who cling to the foodways of their motherlands.
Over centuries, this culinary stratification produced food of the “poor kitchen”– la cucina povera in Italian — in every society. Poor cooks made do with what they had. A review of “poor kitchen” recipes from numerous countries suggests that cooks developed similar preparation methods for the same offal. Over time they determined that slow cooking would concentrate and extract flavors from tough meats, other humble ingredients and local herbs, and they prepared tasty meals from parts of animals deemed unsuitable by the upper classes. In the process, they developed dishes that were more than the sum of their parts and produced cuisines unmatched for local flavor.
After studying various offal preparations and perusing the variety of offal I could find in markets, I decided that oxtail was probably the most suitable offal for my initial challenge and, thus, it became the focus of this post.
Oxtail is the culinary name for the tail of cattle. Although formerly, it referred only to the tail of a steer, ox or any other male cattle, today it is actually the tail of a cow which butchers customarily discard along with the skin. An oxtail typically weighs 2 to 4 lbs. and is skinned and cut into short lengths for sale. Oxtail, a gelatin-rich meat, in a tough cut and needs to be slowly braised to bring out tenderness and develop flavor for a beef stew or soup.
Oxtail is an important source of protein and is featured in stews and soups globally. Oxtail recipes uniformly require braising but differ in the variety and kind of vegetables and spices used. In warmer climates such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines, oxtail is usually prepared as a soup base. In colder climates such as China, Spain, Italy, Ireland and England, oxtail stew’s deep beef flavor makes a hearty meal for hard-working people in winter. In many countries, oxtail soup is merely a diluted stew.
The most notable and universally lauded recipe is the Roman preparation, coda alla vaccinara, which in Italian means “butcher style tail,” and is the pride of every self-respecting cook of Rome. Italian Oxtail Stew hails from Rome’s Regola butcher district where the vaccinari, humble slaughterhouses, skinned and butchered bovines over three years old. Traditionally the meat was cut into five quarters, known in Italian as the quinto quarto (literally the “fifth fourth”). The first quarto went to nobility, the second to the clergy, the third to the merchant class and the fourth to the military. What was leftover –internal organs, tails with skin and such – or the ‘fifth quarter’, went as payment to the butchers who sold this meat to local osterias and poor people.
Several Italian recipes for coda alla vaccinara, an elegant dish with complex flavors and full of history, appealed to me and I tinkered with the ingredients to produce the richness essential to this dish.
I found fresh oxtail in a local Korean grocery store and assembled all necessary ingredients. I followed the classic Italian preparation method by creating a sofrito, browning the oxtail pieces in the oven and then assembling these ingredients with tomatoes, wine and spices for a long-oven braising. The resulting Italian Oxtail Stew is many times tastier than any other beef stew I made. The tender oxtail meat in a slightly sweet unctuous sauce has a deep beef flavor. It is delicious and humble comfort food, an excellent example of la cucina povera.
This Italian Oxtail Stew has a mellow blend of spices, but a pinch of red pepper flakes added with the other spices to sofrito will provide welcome heat to the dish.
Italian cooks have created numerous variations of coda alla vaccinara both sweet or sweet-and-sour. White wine can be substituted for the red wine. Nutmeg is sometimes added and some versions include raisins and dark chocolate like in a Mexican mole.
I served this Italian Oxtail Stew with pappardelle, but other pasta, polenta, creamy mashed potatoes or just slabs of rustic bread to sop up the incredible sauce works as well. This stew is delectable, piping hot from the pot but like other braised dishes, it is even better the next day reheated after refrigerating overnight and after skimming off some excess fat.
Some cooks suggest using a pressure cooker such as the Instant Pot to speed up the braising. I have not tried this method. While it would expedite cooking the oxtail, you may still need to continue simmering off-pressure for about an hour or so to reduce the sauce and concentrate the flavor.
How to buy oxtails: Freshness is essential. Oxtail is normally sold cut into round, crosswise sections. The thick disks should measure from 1½ to three inches in diameter. The fat should be white, the bone-white in the center, and the meat bright red. In the United States, oxtails are sometimes available in the freezer case, but fresh is best. Butchers in an Asian or Middle Eastern supermarket commonly carry fresh oxtail. In other US supermarkets or butcher shops, you may have to order oxtail in advance and use it immediately after purchase.
Italian Oxtail Stew – Coda alla vaccinara
5 pounds (2.5k) oxtail, chopped into 1½ inch (4cm) chunks (ask the butcher to do this)
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
⅓ pound (150g) pancetta or bacon
2 medium leeks
2 stalks celery
1 garlic clove
4 medium carrots
Thyme, fresh, a few sprigs
Rosemary, fresh, a few sprigs
4 bay leaves, fresh or dry
4 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
2 heaping tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cans –28 ounces (400g) San Marzano whole peeled plum tomatoes
1 cup (275ml) Italian red wine
1 quart (1 liter) organic beef stock, preferably homemade
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Parsley for garnish
Wash the oxtail pieces by soaking for at least 1 hour in cold water and changing the water until it runs clear. Dry the meat. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 425ºF (220ºC). Place a large roasting tray in the oven to preheat for 10 minutes.
Season oxtail pieces liberally with salt and pepper. Remove the hot pan from the oven and add oxtail to the roasting pan. Drizzle ¼ cup olive oil over oxtail, toss to coat and place in the hot oven for around 20 minutes or until golden and caramelized.
In the meantime, wash, trim and halve the leeks and celery lengthways, then chop into rough ¾ inch (2cm) pieces. Peel and chop the carrots into ¾ inch (2cm) pieces and set aside.
When the oxtail becomes golden and caramelized, remove from roasting pan and keep warm. Reduce the oven temperature to 325ºF (170ºC). Add pancetta or bacon to the roasting pan and cook until brown and fat renders. Drain the fat and then add remaining olive oil, finely chopped onion, carrot, garlic and half of the celery and sauté until the carrot is soft and the onion translucent.
Transfer vegetables to a Dutch oven.
Pick, roughly chop and add the thyme and rosemary leaves. Then add bay and cinnamon stick to the Dutch oven and cook for around 20 minutes on medium heat, or until soft and sweet, stirring frequently.
Open and empty canned tomatoes and juice into a bowl. Hand-crush the tomatoes and set aside.
Add cloves and flour to the vegetables, stirring well to combine, then pour in the tomatoes and juice and wine. Add oxtail and any roasting juices, cover with the beef stock and stir well.
Turn heat up to high and bring to a boil, then cover with lid and place in the hot oven for around 5 hours, or until the meat falls away from the bone, stirring every hour or so and adding a splash of water to loosen, if needed.
Remove stew from oven and leave to cool for about 10 minutes. Taste and adjust salt and pepper if needed. Strip the meat from the bones and return to the Dutch oven, discarding the bones.
Reheat stew to piping hot on stove. Garnish with parsley. Serve.
Serves 8
Wine to serve with Italian Oxtail Stew: This dish is rather complex and offers an array of flavors. So, it is best paired with a wine that is equally complex, robust and aged that is pleasantly fresh and fruity.
*Henry Notaker, A History of Cookbooks, From Kitchen to Page over Seven Centuries, University of California Press, 2017.
** Such as Amelia Simmons, American Cookery, Albany (1796), Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, New York (1829), Miss Lesley (1857), Alexandro Filippini, The International Cook Book, Doubleday (1906), Fanny Farmer, 1896 Cook Book The Boston Cooking School, Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Joy of Cooking, Bobbs-Merrill (1964 and 1975 editions) and James Beard, American Cookery, Little Brown (1972).
One year ago:http://www.kitchenepiphanies.com/morocco-travelers-sampler-sights/
Two years ago:http://www.kitchenepiphanies.com/discovering-perus-foodways-part-2/
Three years ago:http://www.kitchenepiphanies.com/sausage-and-white-bean-stew/
Four years ago:http://www.kitchenepiphanies.com/spaetzle-the-ubiquitous-noodle/