The Best Short Rib Recipe You’ll Ever Make

Ingredients
4 short ribs, bone-in (about 1.5–2 kg total)
2 bottles red wine (something you’d drink, not cooking wine)
30 ml vegetable oil
Plain flour, for dredging (seasoned with salt and pepper)
4 shallots, peeled and halved
2 medium carrots, roughly chopped (2–3 cm pieces)
2 celery ribs, roughly chopped
1 small leek, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsp tomato paste
1.5 L good-quality beef stock (homemade or store-bought)
2 bay leaves
1 sprig thyme
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
Salt and pepper, to taste

For the Celeriac Purée
1 medium celeriac, peeled and chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
500 ml milk
Salt, to taste
Knob of butter, for finishing

Method
1. Reduce the wine
Pour the red wine into a large saucepan and bring to a gentle boil.
Reduce by half until slightly syrupy — it should taste sweet, not sharp. Set aside.

2. Brown the short ribs
Preheat your oven to 140°C (275°F).
Pat the ribs dry, season well, dredge lightly in seasoned flour.
Heat oil in a heavy, ovenproof pot (like a Dutch oven).
Sear ribs on all sides until deeply browned. Remove and set aside.

3. Sauté the vegetables
Tip off excess fat, leaving about 1 tbsp in the pan.
Add shallots first — cook over medium heat until lightly caramelised.
Then add carrots, celery, leek, and garlic.
Cook until golden brown, scraping up any fond from the bottom.
Stir in tomato paste and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

4. Deglaze and braise
Add the reduced wine to deglaze the pan, scraping the base clean.
Return the short ribs (and any juices) to the pot.
Pour over the beef stock — enough to almost cover the ribs.
Add bay leaves and thyme.

Cover tightly with a cartouche.
Transfer to the oven and braise for 3½–4 hours, until tender and falling off the bone.

5. Rest and strain
Let the ribs cool in the liquid for 30–45 minutes before removing them gently.
Strain the braising liquid through a fine sieve — discard the veg.
Skim some fat if you like, but leave a little for richness.

6. Finish the sauce
Simmer the strained liquid until slightly thickened and glossy.
Whisk in mustard and a splash of vinegar to balance the sweetness.
Taste and season with salt and pepper.

7. Make the celeriac purée
Simmer the celeriac and potatoes in milk with a pinch of salt until soft.
Blend with a knob of butter until smooth and glossy.

To Serve
Spoon a bed of celeriac purée onto each plate.
Place short rib on top.
Spoon the glossy red wine sauce over and around.
Optional: garnish with braised celery or fresh herbs.

This is the best short rib recipe you’ll ever make. So good, it’s still served at a two Michelin star restaurant. And here’s how to make it at home. Daniel Belaloo. His restaurant actually used to be in the same building as ours when we used to train at dinner. No surprise, Daniel’s recipe starts with a ton of booze. It’s not the best quality red wine, but it is quite good quality. Something you wouldn’t mind drinking. We’re going to reduce it until you basically lose the tannins and it starts to taste really sweet. Into the pan with our Shaw ri. Cook this quite slowly so we can develop a really nice crust. Don’t take it too far because your sauce will be slightly better. And then let’s take these bad boys out. They look absolutely next level already. And then in with our shellots. So all the rest of the veggies going to go in at the same time, but the shallots, you don’t want to miss this opportunity to add caramelized sweetness to the rest of the dish. So beautiful golden color on our shellots. They’re going to be really nice and sweet now. Then what we’re going to do is add in the rest of our veg. As the sugar from the vegetables sticks and cooks onto the bottom, you really want to avoid any sort of black bits on the bottom of the pan. That intensity has a sort of profound impact in the final dish. If you don’t keep the bottom of this pan clean, you will always taste it in the final product. Our wine has finished reducing. Really nice and sweet. Very little of that tannin left. It’s almost like a concentrated wine syrup. We’re going to add in tomato puree. Probably about two large tablespoons. Meat goes back in. Heat importantly goes off. The only time you’re actually going to burn your sauce is now because you’re adding stuff into the pan. You forget that the actual caramelization is still happening. Red wine goes in. Beautiful intense syrupy red wine. We got some beef stock. Just use some good quality stock from the supermarket. And then I love cartoons. Absolutely love them. So, this has been cooking now for 4 hours at 140°. Really nice and low and slow. Ideally, what you want to do whenever you braze meat, you want to let it try and chill out inside the stock. So, basically, you don’t really want to be moving it because what happens is the braze meat comes out of the sauce and then all of the moisture that’s inside that meat sort of steams out of it. You get a very, very dry meat. Leave the lid on 45 minutes until it’s stopped steaming and you get a much more moist finish. There we have it. Daniel Balloon’s red wine glaze short rib. Oh, literally melts.