Published March 13, 2020

I’ve been thinking about recipes that expand my cooking skills. This week, I decided to make one of my grandfather’s favorite ingredients — polenta.

On Pinterest I saw an image of Katie at the Kitchen Door’s red wine short ribs, so I decided to pair the two recipes to create braised short ribs with Parmesan polenta.

Short Rib and Parmesan Polenta Ingredients

I started my day with a trip to the local farmer’s market. I wanted to buy the vegetables and spices for my recipe. In the starch aisle — with bags of rice, pasta, and quinoa — I bought two “instant” boxes of polenta.

I wasn’t sure if instant polenta was better than non-instant, as my polenta-cooking research didn’t specify the distinction. So I went around the corner and selected one bag of fine and coarse cornmeal.

Surprisingly, the market didn’t have any bone-in short ribs, since it was so early in the morning, so I went to ShopRite. They had boneless short ribs that looked great, but I needed bone-in.

You can also purchase pork short ribs, but this recipe uses beef short ribs. I saw one packet said, “Beef Chuck Short Ribs” but I wasn’t sure if “chuck” short ribs meant they were inferior in some way (as it could be a shoulder-cut of meat)?

I left ShopRite and drove to my local butcher, who informed me that he was sold out of short ribs (I needed to order a day in advance), and that “chuck” short ribs would be fine.

Besides finding the protein, the ingredients in this recipe are common. You may even have some of these ingredients on-hand already.

How to Make Braised Short Ribs with Parmesan Polenta

My Cooking Notes

Seasoning

I like to chop my vegetables first, so I recommend you start with that and set them aside before seasoning and browning your meat.

You can season the short ribs with whatever you want. The original Pinterest recipe I was following said fresh thyme, a bit of salt, and pepper. I sprinkled the salt and pepper and added enough fresh thyme leaves so that I could see it. Some of the leaves fell off when browning the meat, so it worked out fine.

Pan for Browning

A Dutch oven would be great for browning the short ribs, since they’re meant to go in the oven. I don’t have a Dutch oven (surprisingly), so I used an extra large cast iron pan.

What you want to keep in mind is that you need a high enough pan for all of the liquid you add. Some sauté pans have angled or low sides, which would make it difficult to move in and out of the oven.

Cooking the Polenta

As I mentioned before, I bought instant and non-instant cornmeal for my polenta. I ended up using the non-instant cornmeal and followed the amount of liquid based on the back of the bag.

I personally added in my favorite seasonings, including garlic and onion, as polenta is a plain base (like grits). Feel free to add in your favorite flavors.

The cook time will vary based on the cornmeal you purchased. The back of my bag said to stir for 30-minutes. If you find that your polenta is the texture and creaminess that you want, you can always take it off sooner (but again, it depends on what you purchased).

The Final Product

The Short Ribs

When I first removed the short ribs from the oven they were very dark. I thought, “Oh no, they’re burnt?!” The red wine and balsamic, in combination with the hours of braising, darkens the meat to a blackish color. This is normal.

When I lifted the short ribs from the pan, my tongs nearly went through them. The small, cylinder bones in these short ribs fell away easily. This is how you know that they’re done. I left the bones in the short ribs when I served them. You can remove them if you want to.

The meat itself reminded me of the texture of pulled pork and tasted like pot roast. It was juicy with hints of the wine and fresh herbs.

The Pan Sauce

The wine and stock that is added to the pan for braising is used as a “sauce.”

Katie at the Kitchen Door’s recipe said to strain the vegetables and pan sauce, and use the remaining liquid for serving. Removing the vegetables is because their flavor was extracted into the braising liquid.

I did this for one of the dishes, to create a rich broth that pooled around the polenta.

Since I chopped the carrots larger than the other vegetables, they still held their shape and absorbed some of the pan liquids. For my other dishes, I spooned some of the carrot chunks around the short ribs. They served as an additional vegetable for the dish, thought normally, they would be discarded.

The Parmesan Polenta

Polenta thickens as it sits. I plated my dishes as soon as the polenta was finished, so it was smooth and easy to spoon into bowls. The additional pan sauce also helped keep the polenta at a smooth consistency.

If you’re serving the short ribs the next day, be sure to heat the polenta first, to get it creamy and smooth again, before adding your short ribs.

I topped my polenta with grated Parmesan cheese and pepper before serving. If you have an additional seasoning you would like to use, polenta is a great canvas.

Recipe Score

I would give the braised short ribs with Parmesan polenta a 10/10 for the following:

• Recipe Level

  • Easy: Even if you’ve never cooked with short ribs or polenta this is an easy recipe to work with. Cut your vegetables, brown the meat, and put everything in the oven to braise. Follow the directions on the polenta box to make sure you have the right measurements. Put them together and you have a hearty and impressive-looking meal!

• Ingredients

  • The challenging part of this recipe, at least for me, was finding the short ribs and making sure it was the best cut of meat for this dish. The rest of the ingredients like the base vegetables and wine, are easy to find at your local supermarket or already in your pantry.

• Prep

  • I would recommend purchasing your ingredients the day before you cook this recipe. You need at least three hours of braising in the oven, not including the work before and after the meat has finished braising, to have a finished meal. Prepping your ingredients beforehand, or even cooking the polenta beforehand, will cut down on the amount of cooking time the day of.

• Flavor

  • 10/10: I was happy with how the final product turned out! The rich color of the short ribs reflected the hours of braising in the oven. The pan sauce was delicious — I could eat it like soup. The polenta was a new addition and texture which I loved, since I use mashed potatoes in a lot of my dishes. I wouldn’t change anything about the flavors!

    
    

K. Martinelli Makes Braised Short Ribs with Parmesan Polenta

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