Our pals at Rio Vista Olives sent us the incredible oil that we cook with in this post. Like everything that we recommend on our blog, we use and love their products, and hope that you will too!
The Story
One of the most common cuts of meat growing up was the trusty osso buco. It’s an Italian classic. Along with those irresistible thin Italian sausages and finely-sliced girello, it was the reason for semi-regular hour and a half round trips to the butcher on the other side of town. You can’t trust just any old butcher with your meat. Particularly if you’re an Italian family with fiercely baseless providore allegiances.
The Sauce
Osso buco, or cross-cut veal or beef shanks, have become rather fashionable, but objectively they’re a tough cut of meat with a huge bone in the middle. So turning them into a ragu is simple, but requires time. Start off by patting them dry and dredging them in flour. If you’ve made a mess preparing your pasta, just gather up and use whatever’s left over from that.
Whenever we create a soffritto like this, we tend to work with what’s in the fridge and growing out the back, so this week we substituted fennel for the usual celery that we were missing. Chop everything up fairly roughly, and then stick it in a cold pot with a generous glug of oil.
There are some who swear that osso buco should have no tomatoes in it, only broth. We, perhaps with our typical southern Italian bent, used to make it with no broth and all of the tomatoes. So as a bit of a compromise this week, we’ve gone with a little of both. Much to my delight, I found a half litre of bone broth from our fagottini deep in the freezer! That bone broth just keeps giving.
Once the soffritto is ready, stir in your two tablespoons of tomato paste and cook for a couple of minutes before deglazing with the white wine. Then add in the bay leaves and the bone broth, before bringing to the boil and transferring to the oven. Make sure that you keep an eye on moisture levels as it cooks, and toss in a bit of water if it’s looking too dry. After around 3 hours, the meat should be falling off the bone.
Osso buco is more traditionally served with risotto or polenta, but we made this specifically with pasta in mind. As such, to ensure that it combined properly, we poked it apart with a wooden spoon and stirred the marrow through.
Finally, this dish wouldn’t be complete without a quick gremolata. Just chop together the parsley, lemon zest and juice, and garlic, and serve on top. I was in the mood for a wetter gremolata, so I simply (and controversially) blitzed it all briefly with the stick blender.
Our osso buco was cooked up to pair with our earthy wholemeal spelt gemelli, and it made for one delicious, hearty bowl of pasta! Remember to keep a little of that cooking water aside to assist emulsification when you toss the pasta and sauce together.
Happy cooking, and happy Sunday,
– Al & Al.
Equipment
- Enamelled cast iron pot (or large regular pot)
- Oven
Ingredients
Sauce
- 800 g veal or beef osso buco note that this weight includes bones; if substituting for boneless meat, this would be around 500g
- 1 tbsp flour
- 2+1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil we used Rio Vista Olives’ Nothin’ But Classic
- half head of fennel chopped
- 1 onion diced
- 1 carrot diced
- 1 head of garlic peeled and crushed lightly under the side of a knife
- handful of parsley stems chopped
- 2-3 large sprigs rosemary
- small handful sage leaves
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 1 tsp black pepper corns
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- ½ cup dry white wine
- 500 ml beef bone broth we used our frozen pressure cooker bone broth, but you can substitute with any stock
- 2-3 bay leaves
- salt to season
Gremolata
- handful of parsley
- zest of half a lemon
- 1 small clove garlic
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
- Pat the osso buco dry with paper towels, and dredge in the flour. Shake loose any excess.
- Start the sauce off with a soffritto: put the fennel, onion, carrot, garlic, and all spices apart from the bay leaves into a cold enamelled cast iron pot, with 2 tbsps of olive oil. Cook gently at low-medium heat, stirring regularly, until the fennel has softened and the onion become transparent; about 15-20 minutes.
- While that cooks, heat 1 tbsp oil in a fry pan, on high heat. Brown the meat on all sides, and remove from the pan. Note that if you are able to remove any burnt flour from the pan, you can pour the remaining oil into the main pot containing your soffritto.
- Stir the tomato paste into the soffritto and cook for 2-3 minutes before deglazing with the white wine.
- Add the meat, bone broth, and bay leaves to the pot, and season to taste.
- Bring to a gentle boil, and then transfer to the oven.
- Cook in the oven for 2 ½ to 3 hours, or until the meat is falling off the bone. Make sure that you occasionally check the moisture levels, and add water if it starts to get too dry.
- Remove bones and bay leaves. Scoop any bone marrow out of the bones and stir back through the sauce, and gently break the meat apart with a wooden spoon.
- To make the gremolata, loosely blend or chop together the parsley, lemon zest and juice, and garlic. Serve on top of the osso buco.
- For the perfect pasta to stir into our osso buco, try out our wholemeal spelt gemelli!
