Oxtail Kare-Kare Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Do you have to boil oxtails before cooking? ›

Fortunately, you can tenderize the meat by boiling or braising it for several hours. Braising oxtail is strongly recommended because it adds flavor to the stock and the low and slow cook will tenderize the meat and cartilage and bring out flavor from the bones and marrow.

The stew is flavored with ground roasted peanuts or peanut butter, onions, and garlic. It is colored with annatto and can be thickened with toasted or plain ground rice. Variations of kare-kare can be made with seafood, such as prawns, squid, and mussels, or exclusively from vegetables.

Cooking with oxtail definitely requires time, at least 3 hours, of braising at a light boil to dissolve the collagen and fats that make this cut so chewy.

How do I prepare it? The oxtail should be cut into round portions. Simply brown the meat on both sides over a high heat before transferring to the stewing pot. It's best to start cooking the day before serving.

Fill with enough water to cover oxtails and place over high heat. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to medium. Cook oxtails until tender, 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

To prepare: Remove all packaging. Soak the oxtail in cold water for 1 hour. Place in a pan of fresh water, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Kare-kare and rice are a classic pairing that hardly needs any elaboration. While delicious on its own, the aromatic stew tastes even better with rice, which helps to mellow out the richness of the peanut sauce.

However, in the case of the kare-kare recipe, you may not be using enough peanut butter to make it as thick as you want. For those times when you want your kare-kare sauce to be thickened even more than it is, dissolve some rice flour into some water and drizzle that slurry into your dish.

In the Philippines, if something is particularly good or desirable, it's common practice to say its name twice, so since “kare” means “curry,” you could say that a loose translation of kare-kare is “really good curry.”

Washington says that historical subsistence foods like oxtail, saltfish and callaloo were once considered poor man's food, and over time gained prestige and financial value. “They held a certain social richness in that it was a path forward, a map towards what our ancestors ate,” she explains.

What makes oxtail taste good? ›

There is a good amount of fat and collagen that melt into your dishes as oxtail cooks, which will give a wonderful round texture to sauces and that slightly sticky feel to the meat. And the bonus flavor from the bone marrow that will cook into your dishes make this cut one to really get to know and not be afraid of!

Oxtail Nutritional Profile

High in protein (about 30 grams per 100g serving), essential for muscle repair, hormone production, and immune function. Rich in collagen, improving skin moisture, elasticity, and reducing wrinkles. Essential for skin, hair, nails, bones, ligaments, and tendon health.

starting the braise with oxtails coating in flour not only gives them a nicer color but also starts thickening some fat. onions x2: onions and southern gravy go hand in hand. to me, the more onions the better. i love onion gravy because it's a quick and easy way to add a lot of flavor without overwhelming the dish.

As the meat braises, the collagen inside the cut cooks down and becomes gelatin; as it dissolves, the meat's fibers relax and tenderize. However, if the cooking temperature is too high, these muscle fibers will shrink and seize up, toughening.

OK, so if you find that your brown stew 'oxtail' dish has a more bitter taste, this is more than likely due to using too much browning sauce. No worries---you can fix this! Simply break up the bitter taste with a bit of ketchup, brown sugar, and additional stock. This should help!

It depends on the type of meat and the recipe. Some recipes call for the meat to be boiled first, while others may call for it to be fried or grilled.

The bacteria are often present in the air already, which is how they get onto the meat. This means that some people will run into trouble more often than others. I personally have never had a problem with lactobacillus or funky smells, but some people have to boil their meat every time or they can have issues.