Bone-In Veal Braised in Vegetables
Take the name literally and you’d expect dessert, but the sugar has a job: three tablespoons go into the boiling vegetable broth to knock the sharp edge off the tomato paste and push the meat toward a deeper colour. Then comes an hour and a half to two hours at the lowest possible simmer, after which the veal slips off the bone and the connective tissue has dissolved into a gravy with real body to it.
- The flour dusted on the meat before searing isn’t there for crust — it thickens. It washes off into the broth and binds the gravy without a separate roux.
- Rosemary and garlic go in at the start with the vegetables: their aroma is fat-soluble, so the oil carries it through the whole pot.
- The oyster mushrooms are deliberately scraps — the tough stems nobody wants in soup turn tender over two hours of braising. Cremini swap in cleanly, thyme replaces the rosemary.
Pieces around 150 g (5 oz) are ready closer to the ninety-minute mark, bigger ones need the full two hours; test with a wooden skewer rather than the clock. If three litres (about 12 cups) of water leaves the gravy thin, pull the lid for the last quarter hour and let it reduce. Made a day ahead it’s better still — the fat sets, the flavours pull together.
Part of European cuisine — 103 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Cut the onion and carrots into half-rings, and the celery stalk and oyster mushrooms crosswise into large pieces.
Pour half the vegetable oil into a well-heated deep saucepan and fry the onion, carrots, oyster mushrooms, and celery in it along with the peeled garlic and rosemary sprigs for 4 to 5 minutes.
Add the tomato paste to the fried vegetables and leave it over medium heat for another 4 to 5 minutes. Then add the water, cover, raise the heat, and bring to a boil.
While the broth and vegetables come to a boil, season the veal pieces well with salt and pepper, dust them with flour on both sides, and sear them in a hot skillet in the remaining oil until golden.
Add the sugar, salt, and seared veal pieces to the boiling broth, reduce the heat to the lowest setting, and braise the meat covered for 1.5 to 2 hours (depending on the size of the pieces). The finished meat should pierce easily with a wooden skewer.
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