So many recipes to choose from!
Where do I go for my next Mrs Beeton’s adventure? I chose to not overthink things and go with a main which would naturally follow a starter in a meal, and as I already had the ox tail in the freezer from our local butcher, the Stewed Ox Tail seemed the obvious choice.
Skimming through the ingredients it looked like there was a lot less chopping involved in this one, another thumbs up from me. 👍🏻 After gathering everything I needed I dove straight into my second adventure with good old Mrs Beeton....
Hanging out on my kitchen bench were my Ox tails, 1 Onion, Mace, Black peppercorns, Allspice, Salt, My trusty herbs gathered in a bunch, Butter, Flour and Lemon Juice. The last ingredient I was unable to find in our local supermarket so decided to source a recipe for this via the internet, I have attached this recipe below for mushroom ketchup for those of you who would like to try it. It’s not too tricky and tastes great!
The first instruction was to divide the tails at the joints, which as my kitchen is pretty much devoid of any butchery equipment, would have been a bit of a tricky task. Luckily my trusty local butcher had already done this for me, ah, bliss! Then I simply had to ‘put them in a stewpan with sufficient water to cover and set them on the fire’
As we covered last time, the chances of me lighting a fire in the kitchen without an Aga were pretty slim and a little dangerous, I decided to use my good old slow cooker to make the meat lovely and tender over the 2 1/2 hour cooking time required.
After bringing the cooker to the boil I skimmed the scum (to make the end gravy clearer) from the top of the dish, added my onion chopped into rings, spices, seasoning and my lovely herbs, turning it to low heat.
My youngest and I used the waiting time to host an impromptu 80s dance party in the living room 😎🎶
Time flies when you’re having fun and before too long I was back in the kitchen ready to remove the tails and make the gravy.
I took some of the liquid out (as there was quite a bit due to the size of the cooker) and put it into a pot on the stovetop.
Mixing around 25grams of melted butter and a tablespoon of cornflour together I added this to the saucepan to whisk together, brought it to the boil to simmer for 15minutes until it was thickened and gorgeous. The next instruction was to strain through a sieve but there didn’t seem to be any lumps in my pot so I went straight to adding the tablespoon of lemon juice and teaspoon of my homemade mushroom ketchup.
I heated the lot through and poured it lightly over my dished up Ox tail. The recipe asked for it to be garnished with croutons but I was a bit pushed for time so quickly snipped off a garnish of fresh parsley.
The note under the recipe tells us that the average cost back then for this dish was 1-2shillings, according to the season and it fed around 8 persons.
The slow cooked meat just fell off the bone and melted in your mouth, the addition of the mushroom ketchup was one I had never used before but was a refreshing flavour change!
The YouTube vide for this cook is available to view at: https://youtu.be/l_HpaaXCTaI
I hope you enjoyed my second adventure and will join me for number three.🙂
Thanks so much for following along!
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