SIIM Cyah-Fail Slow Cooker Oxtail

JUMP TO RECIPE

Yes... I guess I am extra.

Not to sound too extra, but for years I had a personal chef at home, especially in the last years of my mom’s life, when it was important for us to have a different diet for her from the rest of the household. And so, we sacrificed. We gave up our normal daily housekeeper and instead had a daily chef who would come in and cook. So basically… mi ‘pwoil [I’m spoiled].

Anyway, on this particular day, I went to lunch at a restaurant in New Kingston with a very good reputation for food in general, and a particularly good reputation for lunch. When I got there, it was late. Around 2 p.m., after the lunch rush. I knew I was going to have some trouble getting chicken leg-and-thigh because I knew that was likely to be sold out. I generally don’t love chicken breasts cooked out on the street because, for some reason, Jamaican people just know exactly how to dry out a chicken breast and turn it into a fossil.

So anyway, I went to this place for lunch. Sure enough, there was no chicken leg-and-thigh. And, there was no chicken breast either. What was left was curry goat, which I don’t eat (whole other story), and oxtail, which normally I do not eat outta road because oxtail is a thing that can so very easily be ruined.

A good oxtail, in my opinion, falls off the bone at the merest touch of the fork, and the bones are almost soft enough to chew. A good oxtail will have broad beans or butter beans. A good oxtail may also have some spinners, which are tiny little flour dumplings shaped like your likkle finger. And, of course, a good oxtail comes with abundant gravy. This is why everybody at a cook shop wants extra oxtail gravy on dem rice.

Now, I don’t know why oxtail is such a tough meat. I don’t know if it’s because the cow has to wag its tail all day to fan flies. I don’t know why it is so tough, but oxtail is very tough. Which means that the reliable Jamaican way to cook oxtail is to cook it in a pressure cooker. You can’t just brown it and put it in a pan and cook it down in some gravy. No. You will be chewing on a hockey puck. That just cannot work. So you have to pressure cook it.

In my household, however, we have no pressure cookers.

Fyah fi di pressure cooker!

For all of my growing up years, the sound of the pressure cooker going tck tck tck tck tck in the kitchen was the sign that we had an efficiently operating, respectable, Jamaican kitchen. However, in those days we had a full-time helper – somebody other than me, somebody specially trained, to deal with the explosive, mercurial pressure cooker.

When I took over full time cooking at the beginning of COVID, when we couldn’t have random people in our home, I made an executive decision to get rid of all pressure cookers. For one, I didn’t know if the rubber seals were any good. And more than once as a child and teenager, I had witnessed a pressure cooker fail in our kitchen and spew whatever was in it all over the stove and onto the walls and floor. I had witnessed the pressure cooker push off the little weight that sits over the pressure valve and blow it sky high.

Honestly, pressure cookers just always seemed to me like a time bomb. Or some kind of kitchen claymore. Why would I want that in my kitchen?

We had about three of them, from various eras. I got rid of all of them.

I was now in a quandary, though, because I love oxtail, but I had gotten rid of the tool that we would normally use to cook the oxtail. In my household, my mom’s oxtail was exceptional. In fact, it was one of the reasons why I would hardly ever eat oxtail outta road in the first place… because of the disappointment. So now I needed to figure out how to cook the oxtail.

Back when I was in college in Toronto, I bought myself a slow cooker. Still have it to this day.

One of the nicest things about a slow cooker is that you don’t have to know how to cook to use it. You just throw everything in there, cover it, turn it on and leave it alone for 8 – 12 hours. So I decided that I was going to try to cook oxtail in the slow cooker.

I went and bought some oxtail. Lillian’s packages a two-pound bag of oxtail that we are able to purchase at PriceSmart for a reasonable sum, even though at this point there is no reasonable sum when it comes to oxtail. It has become quite expensive.

I seasoned it up with dry rub because I much prefer a dry rub on my meat than a wet marinade, for various reasons. And I put it in the fridge overnight. The next morning, bright and early (8am), I took out my slow cooker. In went some chopped onion, fresh garlic, escallion and a generous helping of fresh thyme. The oxtail went on top. Then a nice fat Scotch bonnet pepper.

And then I was like, “Okay, well, what is the juice going to be made of? What is the oxtail gravy going to be made of?”

I looked under the counter and we had a Guinness that had been there for a minute. Didn’t know who brought it here. So I said, “You know what, lemme just throw this Guinness in there. It cyah hurt.” And that will be the juice that’s going to form the gravy.

I poured in the Guinness, covered up the oxtail, turned the slow cooker to low, and went about my business. I came back at around 4pm to check it.

Lo and behold, we had a beautifully cooked oxtail! The smell was just amazing. It smelled up the whole house. And when I stuck a fork in there, the meat was just slipping off the bone.

But, things were missing.

The butter beans were not there. The dumplings were not in there.

So, I very quickly grabbed a can of butter beans, which we normally have in the pantry, drained them, rinsed them and threw them in.

Then I rubbed up some spinners. I always add a little bit of cornmeal to my flour mixture because my dumplings need a little texture. I pulled out some flour, a splash of cornmeal, rubbed that into a nice little dough with some water and a toops a’ salt, and got me a dough ball about the size of my fist. From that I made those tiny little spinners and dropped them into what was now a very abundant gravy.

Everything was now in. I stirred it up, covered it, and left it for another two hours. By six o’clock, when I turned off the slow cooker, I had also cooked a pot of fluffy jasmine rice because we like our bougie rice in this household.

And let me tell you. THIS is the way to cook oxtail.

No more pressure cooking! Tenk yuh Jesus!

I did not have to do anything special. Everything just went into the slow cooker. I did not even pan-sear the oxtail before putting it in. I just threw everything into the slow cooker and covered it up.

And it was excellent!

Which brings me back to the original reason why I decided to write this recipe this morning.

I was reflecting on my experience with the oxtail at this very prominent restaurant. First of all, oxtail is one of the most expensive things on any menu. So my lunch bill, which would normally have been about two thousand dollars, was now four thousand plus dollars.

And it was the most disappointing, tough, grizzly [gristly] oxtail, ever. Yes, the flavour was okay. Just OK. But why do they have to put sugar in oxtail? Why does it have to be sweet? Oxtail is not supposed to be sweet. And where was the abundant gravy? There was some gravy, yes, but it was very thick and gloopy, and it tasted like maybe some ketchup was in there. (Also a no-no in my kitchen.) I was just generally disappointed. Cho.

It reminded me why I don’t eat oxtail outta road. It is just always a crapshoot. So there it was. An absolutely disappointing four-thousand-plus dollar oxtail.

Just further confirmation that I need to tan ah mi yaad [stay home].

SIIM Cyah Fail Slow Cooker Oxtail

You will need

For the oxtail dry rub

• 2 lb Lillian’s oxtail

• 2 tsp sea salt

• 1 tsp black pepper

• 1 tsp cumin powder

• ½ tsp coriander powder

• 1 tsp garlic powder — less if you don’t love garlic as much as I do

In the pot

• 1 medium onion, chopped

• 2–3 cloves fresh garlic, mashed or chopped

• 1 fat stalk of scallion, or a few smaller ones

• A generous few sprigs of fresh thyme

• 1 Scotch bonnet pepper — or 2 if, like us, you are extra

• 1 standard bottle of Guinness stout

To finish

• 1 can baby butter beans, drained and rinsed

• 1–2 fresh sprigs of thyme

• Spinners

For the spinners

• ¾ cup flour

• ¼ cup cornmeal

• A toops of salt (also called a pinch)

• Water, added slowly

Step 1 — Season the oxtail | The night before

Season the oxtail with the salt, black pepper, cumin, coriander and garlic powder.

Put it in a sealed glass container in the fridge overnight.

Step 2 — Build the pot | The next morning

Put the chopped onion and fresh garlic into the bottom of the slow cooker.

Add the scallion. If you like scallion, cut it up. If you want to be able to take it out later, leave it whole.

Add a generous few sprigs of thyme.

Put the seasoned oxtail on top.

Wash your Scotch bonnet(s) and place it/them whole on top of the oxtail. Do not burst your pepper. The slow cooker will make sure the pepper gets into everything. One is perfectly fine for most people. We use two because we like heat.

Pour in one bottle of Guinness.

That is it.

No water. No stock. No oil. Oxtail is going to spring a bagga oil. The oxtail, onions and Guinness will do the gravy trick.

Step 3 — Leave it alone | 6-8 hours

Cover the slow cooker.

Cook for 8 hours on LOW, or 6 hours on HIGH if you are “rushing.”

Step 4 — Add the butter beans + make the spinners

By this point, the oxtail should be beautifully tender and sliding off the bone.

It will also have sprung its own liquid, so the Guinness that went in at the beginning has now become the base of a very abundant gravy.

Drain and rinse the butter beans and add them to the pot.

Add another one or two fresh sprigs of thyme for brightness.

Then make your spinners.

Mix the flour, cornmeal and pinch of salt in a bowl.

Add water slowly and stir or knead until you have a firm dough.

Rub small pieces of dough between your hands into those little finger-shaped dumplings Jamaicans call spinners and drop them directly into the gravy.

Step 5 — Finish | 2 more hours on LOW

Cover the pot again and leave everything on LOW for another 2 hours. There is no need to turn it up. At this point the pot is very hot and simmering.

And that is genuinely it.

If you want to adjust the seasoning, now is the time, but I don’t usually have to add anything else.

That’s why this recipe is amazing.

Oxtail has its own incredible flavour, and this recipe allows that flavour to come through.

If you like a thicker gravy

What you get from this recipe is something a bit more soupy, with abundant gravy, which is exactly how I like it, because I don’t love extra-thick gravy. But if you want yours thicker, mix 2 tablespoons of cornstarch with 2 tablespoons of water and mix that into the pot liquid before you put in the butter beans and spinners. Then leave it to cook for the final two hours.

Serve with white rice, and mek me know how it go!

Election run. Pressure cooker lose it seat!