Gordon Ramsay’s beef short ribs are 6 thick-cut meaty ribs braised in a whole bottle of red wine and beef stock with a halved head of garlic, slow-cooked at 170°C for 3 to 4 hours until the meat falls away from the bone, then finished with crispy pancetta and chestnut mushrooms.
The recipe comes from his Ultimate Cookery Course, both the book and the TV episode. He writes: “Short ribs are going through a real renaissance, just like lamb shanks and pork cheeks have before them. They are a cheap cut full of fat and sinew but that disappears as you slowly cook them in red wine and stock.”
Two techniques carry the whole dish. First, the tomato purée gets roasted in the pan before any liquid arrives, because as he puts it, “cooking it out, as we say in kitchens, rounds off the tart notes you sometimes get in tomatoes.” Second, the sauce thickens itself, as the softened garlic cloves get squeezed from their skins and pushed through a sieve with the strained cooking liquid, so the garlic becomes the body of the sauce without any flour.
Gordon Ramsay’s Slow-Cooked Beef Short Ribs
Course: DinnersCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy3
20
minutes4
minutes850
kcal4 hr 20 min
The Ultimate Cookery Course braise: a whole bottle of red wine reduced by half, a full head of garlic that melts into the sauce, and 3 to 4 hours in a low oven, finished with crisp pancetta and mushrooms.
Ingredients
- For the short ribs:
Olive oil, for frying
6 thick-cut meaty beef short ribs
1 large head of garlic, cut in half horizontally
1 heaped tbsp tomato purée
1 x 750ml bottle red wine
1 litre beef stock
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- For the finish:
150g pancetta lardons
250g small chestnut mushrooms, trimmed and halved
Chopped flat leaf parsley, to garnish
Directions
- Preheat: Preheat the oven to 170°C (340°F/Gas 3).
- Brown the ribs: Heat a deep-sided roasting tray on the hob and add a glug of olive oil. Season the short ribs thoroughly, then fry for 10 to 15 minutes to brown really well on all sides.
- Build the base: Add the halved garlic head, cut side down, pushing it to the bottom of the pan. Add the tomato purée and heat for a minute or two to cook it out.
- Reduce the wine: Pour in the wine to deglaze the pan, scraping up the bits at the bottom. Bring to the boil and cook for 10 to 15 minutes until the liquid is reduced by half, then add stock to nearly cover the ribs. Bring to the boil again, basting the ribs with the juices.
- Slow cook: Cover the roasting tray with foil and cook in the oven for 3 to 4 hours, basting now and then, until the meat is tender and falling away from the bone.
- Fry the finish: About 10 minutes before the ribs are ready, fry the pancetta for 2 to 3 minutes until crisp and golden. Add the mushrooms and cook for 4 to 5 minutes until tender, then drain off any excess fat.
- Make the sauce: Transfer the ribs to a serving dish. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins and pass through a sieve. Spoon any excess fat off the cooking liquid, then strain it through the sieve and mix with the garlic. If the sauce is too thin, reduce it for 10 to 15 minutes more.
- Serve: Top the ribs with the hot pancetta and mushrooms, pour the sauce around, and garnish with chopped parsley.
FAQs
Are beef spare ribs the same as short ribs?
No, and the difference matters when you’re ordering. Short ribs come from lower down near the belly, with a thick slab of meat sitting on top of the bone, which is what survives 4 hours of braising. Beef spare ribs, or back ribs, come from up where prime rib is cut, so most of their meat sits between the bones rather than on top, and they suit faster cooking.
In his Asian cookbook Ramsay adds the British translation: “Short ribs, also known as Jacob’s ladder, is a beef cut taken from the top rib and has the bone in,” noting you’ll probably need to order them from your butcher, with stewing steak as a good alternative. If a sticky glazed rack is what you’re actually after, his sticky pork ribs recipe is the one built for that style.
Does Ramsay have a second short ribs recipe?
He does, and almost nobody writes about it. In his Asian travels cookbook there’s a Vietnamese-style version, beef short ribs braised in rice wine and spices, where the same French technique runs on 225ml of rice wine instead of a bottle of red, with star anise, cinnamon, coriander seeds, chillies, and ginger, finished with fish sauce, dark sweet soy, and honey.
He calls it “a great example of the marriage of French and Vietnamese cuisines,” and structurally it IS this recipe with different aromatics, browned meat, a deglazed pan, then a slow oven. He serves that one with steamed rice, and his fried rice recipe works just as well for soaking up the spiced sauce.
Why does Ramsay use a whole bottle of red wine?
Because the wine IS the braising liquid, not a flavouring splash. The full 750ml goes in and immediately reduces by half over 10 to 15 minutes of hard boiling, which burns off the alcohol and concentrates the fruit before the stock arrives. Skip the reduction and just pour everything in together, and the sauce comes out of the oven thin and slightly raw tasting.
Use a wine you’d drink, a Merlot or Côtes du Rhône works, but nothing precious, since 4 hours of cooking does the refining. The same reduce-first rule runs through his beef stew and dumplings, where beer plays the role the wine plays here.
How do you know when short ribs are done?
Forget the thermometer on this one, because the meat tells you. Done means “tender and falling away from the bone,” so a fork should slide in with no resistance and the meat should pull apart in strands. If it still bounces back, it needs more time, and whether that takes 3 hours or 4 depends entirely on how thick your ribs are cut.
Basting every 45 minutes or so keeps the exposed tops from drying out under the foil. If the meat is ready but the sauce looks thin, that’s what the sieved garlic fixes, and a final 10 to 15 minutes of reduction does the rest.
Can you make short ribs ahead, and what about leftovers?
Short ribs are genuinely better the next day, because the meat soaks the sauce back up as it cools, and the fat rises to the top where you can lift it straight off, leaving the sauce cleaner than it was on day one. Cool everything together, keep it in the fridge for up to 3 days, then reheat gently on the hob with the ribs sitting in the sauce.
Fry the pancetta and mushrooms fresh when you reheat though, as they go soft and greasy overnight. Leftover meat pulled off the bone makes a serious second dinner, shredded through the strained braising liquid over his perfect mashed potatoes or stirred through pappardelle.
