The time is now.

There has never been a better time to eat ox. Fact. It’s pricing is ‘recession friendly’, you can now buy it in your local Waitrose (cheek or tail – both good) and crucially, it’s Chinese year of it. Which in the past has served as a handy excuse for me to eat rats (2008) and, before that, monkeys (2004) – both of which tasted nothing like chickens (1982 – present, tenuous justification not required).

But I have a confession to make: despite being weaned on tinned oxtail soup I had, until yesterday, never experienced the joys of its cheek. Knowingly anyway. Apparently butchers sometimes hide it in their mince. Can’t think why, it’s delicious. It’s courser grained than most beef cuts and has a far stronger flavour – ever so slightly offally. But don’t be put off by this, it does what kidney does to a good steak pie: lends a deep savouryness to the gravy.

Like most ‘forgotten cuts’ it does take a bit of cooking, and like most things that take a bit of cooking, it’s even better the next day. So my advice to you is this: fix a quick pasta dinner, wolf it down, make a start on the stew below and let it bubble away late into the night. Then, the next day, all you need to do is whack it on the stove and boil some potatoes for a bit of mash. Or you could do what I did and accidentally go to the pub for a few hours and pick up some chips on the way home. Cheeky.

Ox cheek in beer

You’ll need:

4 tablespoons of vegetable oil.
2 large onions, sliced.
3 carrots.
2 sticks of celery.
1 ox cheek.
About 300ml of good English beer (I used Bishop’s Finger – very nice too).
3/4 pint chicken stock (you’ll get away with a cube).
2 bayleaves.
4 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar (the cheap stuff is fine for this).

Put a large heavy-bottomed saucepan on a low heat and add a tablespoon of oil. Drop in your onions and fry them until they’re an even brown colour. This could take twenty minutes.

As they’re doing, chop the carrots, celery and cheek into two centimetre chunks. Slip the meat into a freezer bag with the flour and a generous pinch of salt and pepper. Massage the bag until the meat is evenly coated in the mix, then take it out and set it aside.

Remember to give your onions a stir from time to time. If they’re ready before you’ve finished the next step, take them off the heat.

Add three tablespoons of oil to a hot sauté pan and fry the cheek pieces on each side until they look like little cubes of mahogany. Remove from the pan and put  in a bowl. Now tip out any left over oil from the pan, return it to the hob and add a few splashes of the beer. This will give you a chance to loosen any stuck-on bits with a spoon. Once the bottom of the pan is clean, pour this mini gravy into the bowl with your ox meat.

Your onions must be brown by now, so add to them your carrots, celery and the balsamic vinegar and turn the heat up to medium. Once all the vinegar has reduced away to nothing, add your beery ox.

All that remains now is to add the rest of the beer, the chicken stock, bay leaves and lots of salt and pepper, and let it simmer, covered, on a very low heat for around two hours or until the ox cheek is meltingly tender.

Tagged as: beer, ox cheek