Short Ribs with Crispy Garlic and Chile Oil

Let's get some sound effects.

(pan sizzles)

You hear that?

Not smart, you don't wanna put your face towards a hot pan.

(funky electronic music)

Hey guys I'm gonna show you one of my favorite recipes

that I've worked on, it's super easy, really, really simple

and it's from our February issue, the story called

My Modern Guide to Middle Eastern Food.

It's a recipe that consists of seared short ribs,

a cut that's typically braised.

I'm gonna show you how to treat it like steak.

As you top it with this really beautiful, tasty chile oil

made with two different types of chiles.

That comes together in minutes,

so let's grab the ingredients.

Come on.

Oh my God, it's a (bleep) show.

(mumbles)

Get out of my shot.

(chuckles nervously)

Okay.

Just get out. Now we got a meal.

This is gonna be crazy.

All right we got urfa.

Maras.

[Man] Close it up.

Okay.

We have two pieces of boneless short rib.

A really nice marbled fatty piece.

You could also use strip steak.

I'm gonna pat this down to get any excess moisture off.

Boom, boom, boom.

Okay, then I'm gonna season the hell out of it.

You guys know I like my salt.

You're gonna pour enough salt 'til you can see it

on the surface on all sides.

Don't forget the bottoms.

This is a fatty cut of meat so it could take

quite a bit of salt, and then boom, boom.

We're gonna let this sit at room temperature

for about an hour so it can absorb the salt.

And so the meat can cook evenly.

(funky electronic music)

We're now gonna make our chile oil.

Probably gonna use three cloves of garlic.

I like garlic, pretty much with any kind of recipe

that I develop or food that I crave,

I just want like a subtle bit of garlic.

These are some tiny cloves, so I might do four.

Okay?

So we're just gonna peel these bad boys, bad girls.

Okay, so this oil really only consists of a few things.

We're gonna be making garlic chips.

Yeah, garlic chips.

You're gonna make garlic chips by combining

olive oil and garlic in a skillet.

Okay, so, you can do it with a knife,

I'm just being a little picky.

So you just want it really thin though,

but you don't want the garlic to be,

this garlic slice to be floppy,

you still want them to be a little sturdy

and hold their shape.

So.

Boom, look at that.

Not too floppy, sturdy.

We'll just keep going.

Again, you can do this with a knife.

Be really careful.

So we have the garlic.

We're gonna use a third of cup olive oil,

extra virgin, the good stuff.

Oh all right thanks. Calm down, Brad.

Then we're gonna combine the garlic and the oil.

Get that covered.

Then I wanna place it over medium low,

and we're just gonna watch after this.

You wanna combine the garlic and the oil in a cold pan,

bring it up over medium low so the garlic cooks evenly.

Once our garlic begins to turn golden,

you wanna take it, transfer it to a bowl so it can cool.

It'll darken slightly while it's cooling.

You see some of them turning golden.

We're just gonna keep shaking the pan.

And it's starting to darken really quickly,

it'll just lower the heat, and you want them to turn crisp.

So you see that, that's the color you want, golden.

I wanna transfer a bowl immediately so it can cool.

We don't wanna cool in the hot pan.

So, we're gonna let this cool for two minutes,

then we're gonna add two chiles that I really, really love.

The first one is maras, and the other one is called

urfa biber or urfa pepper.

They're both used widely in Turkish cuisine,

but they have very different flavors.

The maras is kind of a mild, fruity dried seedless chile.

The urfa, as you can see, it's definitely darker,

has a smokey flavor to it so I combine these two

to get a really beautiful color,

and they bloom in the hot oil.

You get this kind of cool garlic chile oil.

I'm gonna season this with a bit of salt.

Because that's fat, fat needs salt.

(funky electronic music)

These have been resting, you can see that

the salt has been absorbed, but the meat has really

some water, so we're gonna first turn on the pan.

You want it pretty damn hot.

I'm gonna pat these steaks dry one more time.

See, more liquid.

I'm gonna douse these two pieces of meat

with about two tablespoons oil.

I like to cover the meat in oil before it hits the pan.

It's tj a habit that I've developed.

You have a lot of fat going on on the steak already.

See how well marbled it is, so it's gonna release

a lot of that fat while it's cooking.

Give it a few turns.

Okay.

We're gonna check the pan.

You wanna heat the cast iron for about five minutes

on medium high heat and ensure that the pan

is really smoking hot before the steaks go in.

Boom, boom.

All right.

I'm gonna cook the steak in a way that I'm not sure

if any of you guys have seen before.

Steak ala Blumenthal, Blumenthal is the last name

of Heston Blumenthal and what he does is

he turns his steak every 20 to 30 seconds.

I don't do every 20 to 30 seconds, I do about like

every minute and a half, and what you're doing here

is getting a nice, even crust throughout the steak

while ensuring that the center, or pretty much all around

is a nice, medium rare, pink center.

Anyways, we're gonna put the steak in the pan.

(meat sizzles)

I'm gonna give these a flip.

You're gonna be turning the meat every few minutes,

the long sides will take about four minutes.

You want to be turning them occasionally.

Blumenthal does every 30 seconds, we're gonna turn them

every minute, every two minutes.

Until it's like evenly browned all over.

I need to develop a nice crust.

The short sides we'll probably need about

two minutes each and you're gonna just keep

going back and forth with that every 30 seconds.

And this recipe's great if you have ventilation,

and you don't live in a studio apartment in New York City.

So not in my house.

Okay, we got a good crust on these.

All over.

Feel right, I'm gonna let these rest for about 15 minutes.

Turn that off.

Steaks have been resting 15 minutes.

These are petite steaks, that's how I'm eating these days,

kind of where I'm just not eating too much meat.

Anyways, we're gonna cut these up.

We're gonna go against the grain.

A little nub for myself.

Okay, I'm gonna save these juices.

You don't have to but I like them.

You can take a shot of it (mumbles).

Okay cool, we got our steak sliced up.

I'm gonna top it off with the garlic chile oil.

You can see that color, the garlic still stays

really crisp and crunchy.

I'm just gonna put some of that oil all over.

I like some sherry vinegar.

There's a good amount of fat in the steak,

you have the chile garlic oil, which is fatty,

has the crispy garlic and spicy, I want some sherry vinegar,

you can use red wine vinegar, you can pretty much use

whatever vinegar you like, but I really like sherry

for its nice acidity and complexity

so I'm just gonna do a few drops.

And then a little bit of flaky salt.

There you have it.

It's your short rib steaks with garlic chile oil.

Make it if you like your meat brown and juicy.

(chuckling)

I'm gonna take a shot of the meat juice.

(smacks lips)

That was worth it.