Braised in a beautiful balsamic sauce, these slow-cooked beef cheeks are so meltingly tender you could devour them with a spoon! Eight hours of cooking ensures that the braising liquid turns into a luscious, gravy-like sauce. I encourage you to enjoy it spooned over creamy potato mash or fluffy cooked grains such as quinoa or bulgur wheat.
Ingredients
4 tbsp olive oil
4 beef cheeks (about 1.2kg total)
4 tbsp flour or cornflour
1 onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
4 carrots, sliced into rounds
2 bay leaves
handful of fresh thyme sprigs,finely chopped
2 cups beef stock
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
Method (Serves 6–8)
Heat 2 tablespoons of your olive oil in a large frying pan over high heat. If your slow cooker has a sauté setting, you can use this. Dust the beef cheeks in the flour, then sear on each side for about 2 minutes or until nicely browned. Transfer the meat to your slow cooker.
Heat the remaining olive oil in the frying pan, then add the onion and garlic. Cook, while stirring, for a few minutes until the onion starts to become translucent.
Pile the onion and garlic into the slow cooker along with the remaining ingredients, and cook on high for 8 hours.*
You’ll know it’s ready when the meat simply falls apart.
Serve piled on top of vegetable mash or cooked grains.
* You can also cook this in a Dutch oven for 3 hours in an oven preheated to 160°C, or on the stovetop over low heat for 2½ hours.
This sticky date pudding is one of my favourite things to make during the colder months. What makes this dessert really special is the hint of ginger and cardamom in the coconut butterscotch sauce. I bet you can’t wait to grab your spoon and dig in! Just remember to get your dates on to soak a bit beforehand. If you don’t need this to be vegan, you can use regular milk, cream and butter.
We know it can be tricky to find the perfect recipe to make mum for Mother’s Day so we’ve put together this list of fantastic recipe ideas from some of our favourite cookbooks. Whether you’re looking for a cosy soup or a sweet treat, or something in between, we’ve got you covered!
Filo is such a versatile pastry. No matter how you put this together, the results are always fun.
I once supervised and helped to cook this tart for 150 people in a woolshed in country Victoria, where it was served with the most sensational farm cream.
This is the dish Patrick Dempsey’s character tells Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones that he would have brought her on their imaginary second date in Bridget Jones’s Baby.
This colourful rice noodle salad with tender steak and sticky gochujang aubergine makes a quick and tasty dinner.
A healthy and fuss-free take on a meatball bake, this orzo dish makes a comforting dinner perfectly paired with a fresh salad.
When I go to a certain restaurant, I have to order the katsu curry, with a number of small plates of course. I like serving this with some cucumber, pickled onions and a bit of soy sauce. Divine.
Everyone loves tacos, but they aren’t the most natural weight-loss food. By pairing white fish with a juicy mango salsa, this recipe gives us the best of both worlds – it’s filling and tastes superb!
These muffins are edible poetry. The earthy elegance of matcha meets the sweet tang of raspberries and the creamy allure of white chocolate in a muffin that’s as sophisticated as a first date at a five-star teahouse.
They say bananas are nature’s perfect snack, so clearly this is the perfect bread.
