Slow Cooker Short Rib Cottage Pie (Adam Byatt)

Source video by Adam Byatt on YouTube. This recipe was adapted with strict source-fidelity rules and is marked for human review.

This is Adam Byatt's elevated cottage pie, a dish he served on the tasting menu at Trinity over a decade ago. Instead of mince, beef short ribs are browned hard then braised low and slow with red wine, port and beef stock alongside a chunky mirepoix, star anise and rosemary. The picked meat is folded through soft lyonnaise onions and the reduced braising sauce, layered with caramelised carrots and a piece of brined bone marrow, then topped with duchess potato and baked. It is a centrepiece cottage pie for a dinner party, not a midweek family meal. Adapted here for the slow cooker, replacing the two and a half hour oven braise with a long gentle cook.

Ingredients

• 3 bonesbeef short ribs, bone in
• 2 tbspvegetable or sunflower oil
• sea salt
• black pepper, freshly ground
• 2 mediumonions, roughly chopped for mirepoix
• 3 stickscelery sticks, peeled, roughly chopped
• 2 largecarrots, roughly chopped for mirepoix
• 1 headgarlic, cut in half across the equator
• 4 wholestar anise
• 2 sprigsfresh rosemary
• 4 sprigsfresh thyme
• 2 leavesbay leaves
• 500 mlred wine
• 150 mlport
• 750 mlrich beef or veal stock

• 3 mediumcarrots, peeled and cut on an angle into chunks

• 3 largeonions, thinly sliced (add late)
• 50 gunsalted butter (add late)

• 1 piecebone marrow, brined in salty water overnight (add late)
• 1 sprigfresh rosemary (add late)

• 1 kgfloury potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed (add late)
• 2 yolksegg yolks (add late)
• 30 gparmesan, finely grated (add late)
• 1 tspDijon mustard (add late)

Method

1. Pat the short ribs dry and season generously with salt and pepper. Heat a heavy pan with a little oil and brown the ribs hard on all sides except the bone side. Adam stresses massive amounts of colour here, because colour is flavour. Lift the ribs out and set aside.

   ~15 min

2. Drop the angled carrot chunks into the same pan with the rendered beef fat. Keep the heat up and colour them on the cut faces, then add 2 of the star anise. Cook until the carrots are around 90 percent done and well caramelised. Lift out onto a tray and reserve for the assembly.

   ~10 min

3. Add a little more oil to the same pan and add the mirepoix onion, celery and roughly chopped carrot, the halved head of garlic cut side down, the remaining 2 star anise, rosemary, thyme and bay. Brown well until the vegetables are deeply coloured.

   ~10 min

4. Pour in the red wine and port and reduce on the hob until syrupy but not completely dry. Slow cookers do not reduce, so this step must be done before transferring.

   ~10 min

5. Tip the browned vegetables, wine reduction and short ribs into the slow cooker. Arrange the ribs bone side up and packed tightly together. Pour over enough hot beef or veal stock to come up around the meat but keep the bones exposed.

   ~5 min

6. Cover and cook on Low for 8 hours or High for 5 hours, until a spoon passes straight through the meat.

   ~480 min

7. Carefully lift the ribs out. Pick all the meat off the bones in generous flakes and keep warm. Discard the bones.

   ~15 min

8. Strain the braising liquid through a fine sieve into a pan, pressing the vegetables. Bring to the boil, skim off the fat, then reduce on the hob by half until glossy and rich.

   ~20 min

9. While the sauce reduces, make the onion lyonnaise. Melt the butter in a wide pan, add the sliced onions and a pinch of salt and cook slowly, stirring often, until completely soft and melting. Do not rush this.

   ~30 min

10. Make the duchess potato. Mash the boiled potatoes smooth, then beat in the egg yolks, grated parmesan, Dijon mustard and seasoning. Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle.

    ~15 min

11. Combine the picked meat with the lyonnaise onions and enough of the reduced sauce to give a loose, unctuous mixture. Check seasoning. Spoon into an ovenproof pie dish.

    ~5 min

12. Scatter the reserved glazed carrots over the meat. Make a small hole in the centre of the bone marrow piece, sit it on top of the filling, and push a sprig of rosemary into the hole.

    ~5 min

13. Pipe the duchess potato around and over the filling, leaving the bone marrow exposed. Grind over a little black pepper.

    ~10 min

14. Bake in a conventional oven preheated to 200C (180C fan) for 20 minutes, until the potato is golden and the bone marrow has melted into the filling. Serve straight from the dish.

    ~20 min

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