Beef Short Ribs – My Favorite Dinner Party Food

I consider a great dinner party meal to be one that requires prep before the guests arrive, seems more complicated than it really is, and, of course, has your guests salivating from the minute they walk in the door until they put that first bite of food in their mouths.

Beef short ribs fit each and every criteria I have for dinner party food.

(By the way, spell check wants me to use criterion instead of criteria – the singular version. Do people still use that word or has it gone the way of agendum?)

(Aside complete, continue…)

Plus, remember when I met the farmer in a dark parking lot and filled my freezer with meat?

Can you see the short ribs in there?

Lately, I have made them quite a few different ways – in a ragu and served over noodles, baked in the oven, cooked on the stove, even finished under a hot broiler to crisp up the outside once they were done stewing – but, my favorite is one of the simpler methods. (Thank goodness, I need a little simplicity.)

Cooking the short ribs for a long time and using the broth as gravy. It keeps the flavors together and allows for a variety of ways to serve the dish.

This dish takes a while to cook – about 4 hours including prep time – but it only requires a half an hour of hands-on time. Plus, it can be cooked the day before and just heated up when your guests arrive.

Warning.

If you were, as an entirely hypothetical situation, to prepare this the day before a big dinner party your boyfriend can’t attend because he has to work… And you made the house smell outrageously delicious… He may grumble about how “unfair” you are for the entire three hours the dish is cooking. (But, it also might inspire him to take you out to an amazing dinner, because now all he wants is something outstanding to eat. Hmmm. I may want to replace the “Warning” with “Added Benefit.”)

Recipe
Beef Short Ribs