I’m pretty positive that short ribs with polenta is one the most comforting dishes of all time. This is actually a pretty easy recipe to make. It seems time consuming at first, but then you realize most of that time is just spent waiting for the short ribs in the oven. Oh and those few hours can be quite difficult as the delicious aroma spreads through your home. You will probably end up eating something else while you wait and spoiling your entire appetite, so then you’ll have to call me to come over and eat the ribs for you. This is normal, and ok.

Start off with, as Barefoot Contessa would say, some GOOD short ribs. I got mine at Whole Foods this time and boy were they absolutely beautiful. Probably the prettiest short ribs I’ve ever seen. If you’re in LA, my favorite butcher is Lou at the family-owned Marconda’s Meats in the Farmer’s Market at The Grove. I have yet to explore the butchers that Minneapolis has to offer so if anyone has any suggestions please let me know!

Oh ok, before I start, I just realized I should list all the ingredients first for the short ribs:

• 4-6 Bone-In Beef Short Ribs (approximate serving tends to be one per person if they’re a nice size)
• 1 large yellow onion (or Spanish if available), sloppily diced if you want, you’re going to put this in the food processor anyways
• 2 peeled carrots – also sloppily chopped
• 2 ribs of celery, sloppy chop
• 1-3 cloves of garlic sloppy chopped (depending on your garlic preference, I used 2)
• 1.5 cups of tomato paste (one of those 12 oz. cans. Note: I suggest downloading a unit converter app on your phone, it’s super helpful with this kind of stuff. I use “Units”, it gets the job done.)
• 2 cups of water
• Fresh thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• Kosher salt
• Extra-virgin olive oil, none of that EVOO Rachel Ray shit
• 2.5 cups of red wine for the dish (a cab works nice)
• 4 cups of red wine for yourself

Directions

1. Take a nice sip of your wine.
2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
3. Take all the veggies and pop them in the food processor to puree them into a paste (you can do this now or while the ribs are browning).
4. Season all sides of the short rib with the kosher salt.
5. Coat a dutch oven or oven-safe deepish pan (I like a large oval dutch oven for this so that they’re not all on top of each other) with the oil and bring to a highish heat.
6. Add the ribs and brown all sides.
7. Wine sip.
8. Remove the ribs when they are nicely browned on all sides (but pink inside) and set aside for later.
9. Drain any excess fat out but using the same pan and a little extra oil if needed add the veggie paste. Season with some more kosher salt.
10. Cook the veggies for about 10 minutes. You want to cook them long enough so that a crust of sorts starts to form on the bottom of the pan, but not at a high enough temp so that the crud burns. Just keep letting them sit for a bit and scrape the crusty bits off the bottom, let sit, scrape again, etc. Medium-high heat.
11. Add in the tomato paste and work it into the veggies, letting it brown a bit, for 5 minutes.
12. SIP YOUR WINE GODDAMMIT.
13. Then pour in the 2.5 cups of wine that you set aside for the dish. Scrape around the pan to get those crusty bits of goodness off and into your sauce. Lower the heat to mediumish and reduce the wine a bit, by half. I don’t remember how long this took, but watch it and you’ll be fine. Maybe 15 minutes or so.
14. Pop the ribs back into the pan and add the water. How much water you need may depend on what size of pan you are using but you want the water to almost be covering the ribs but not quite.
15. Take the fresh thyme sprigs, all bundled together with some kitchen string, and the bay leaves, and place them in the middle.
16. Huge sip of wine.
17. DONE. Now you wait. For 3 hours. Turn the ribs upside down halfway through, I started with meat side down and finished with bone side down. Prob doesn’t matter that just seemed to make more sense to me for whatever reason.

Now you can start on the polenta! This will take about 45 minutes to make and you’ll be putting it in the oven for 35 of that. I timed it so that I put the polenta in the oven right after the ribs were done and just made sure the ribs were covered in the dutch oven on the side, they kept their heat nicely. If you don’t have a dutch oven I don’t even know what to tell you…except that you should probably be ashamed of yourself. The dutch oven is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Put it on your Christmas list.

Creamy Truffled Polenta

Ingredients

• 1 cup ground cornmeal. (I used Red Mill corn grits/polenta.)
• 3/4 cup of finely diced red onion. None of that sloppy chopping from above.
• 2 cloves of finely minced garlic
• 1 quart of chicken stock (like those Swanson boxes)
• 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter
• 1.5 teaspoons of kosher salt
• A dash of freshly ground pepper
• 1/4 – 1/3 of a cup of shredded truffle cheese – I used a nice black truffle cheese I found at Whole Foods this time, you can also find a truffle cheese at Trader Joes or Surdyk’s if you’re in Minneapolis. If you don’t have access to any of these stores, you may be able to find truffle oil at your local grocer, which in that case, probably a teaspoon or so would be good.

Directions

1. Turn the oven down from 375 to 350.
2. Big wine sip.
3. Again, use an oven-safe pan or pot here. No need for dutch oven, but something deep is good. Place pan on stove and add some olive oil, over medium heat.
4. Add onion and salt and cook for about 5 minutes.
5. Reduce the heat to low so you don’t go burnin’ no garlic and toss it in, saute that for a couple minutes.
6. Add the stock and turn the stove up to high until it starts boiling.
7. Gradually whisk in the cornmeal until you’ve added it all, then cover the pan and pop it in the oven.
8. Wine chug.
9. Cook for about 35 minutes, making sure to whisk/stir the polenta every 10 minutes or so.
10. Remove from oven and add in the butter and salt and pepper to taste.
11. Gradually stir in the cheese.

That’s it! Place one short rib on the polenta and garnish with some Italian parsley and a flake of parmesan.

Let’s hope you are drunk by now. Drunk enough to give me your short ribs…