Oxtail

The beginning of the month saw the return of the oxtail, triggered by a chance encounter at Waitrose's heritage meat counter. Noting in passing that the presence of kippers at the fish counter adjacent has become very irregular, which is a pity. Their kippers are much better than those on offer from the man in the market.

The oxtail arrived at Waitrose in shrink wrapped packs, as seems to be the custom in most places these days, and I took one pack. About 1.4kg at around £10 the kilo; so middle of the road price-wise.

It turned out to have been quite a while since we last took oxtail, and it took a little while to turn up cooking precedents. Was it really more than four years ago? 

Roughly speaking the precedent was in at 08:00 at 100°C for 17:00, which was not practical on this occasion, when I settled for in at 09:00 at 110°C for 17:00. Coarsely chopped five onions in the bottom of the dish, then the oxtail, no water. Lid on.

Checked-in at 16:15 when it was looking near done. Drained off the liquor - very fatty - and added some greased carrots. On the side, cooking some rice and black kale.

As it turned out, the carrots were a little underdone and could have done with another 15 minutes. But quite eatable as they were. We did most of the meat in the first sitting, leaving just one big lump and one small lump.

Taken with a drop of 'Proper Job', from Sainsbury's, out of Cornwall.

The debris. Recycled through the council these days, rather than through our own compost bin. This sort of thing seems to attract foxes and rats.

Blue grapes by way of dessert.

PS 1: the big glass dish that the oxtail was cooked in was originally intended for the slow cooking of an entire chicken. But I don't think that it has ever been used to do that.

PS 2: I continue to puzzle over the strong flavour of Heinz oxtail soup, which I used to like as a child. The recipe does not admit to the exotic spices I was expecting.

The start of the Gemini story. Along the way he points to the large amount of tomato and the small amount of beef, oxtail or otherwise. I was amused by his close, in the context of explaining why reprise might be disappointing: '... Removal of MSG: Earlier iterations of canned meat soups frequently used added monosodium glutamate (MSG) and hydrolysed vegetable protein (HVP). Modern cans rely more mildly on yeast extract and tomato paste to stay clean-label'.

Gemini remains strong on marketing matters! There must be a lot of it out there on the Internet.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/first-oxtail-of-year.html.