The two most popular ways to cook beef short ribs are braising and grilling. My favorite way, though, is to cook short ribs in a slow cooker. Slow cooking has a couple of very important advantages over the other two cooking methods – it’s simple and requires very little hands-on time. I would say it’s practically effortless. Getting similar results from grilled or even braised short ribs is not nearly as easy. And the best part is that these slow cooker beef short ribs are succulent and exceptionally tender – the meat literally falls off the bone – and they taste really, really well because of the amazing, gravy-like sauce they cook in! Some recipes suggest placing all of the ingredients into a slow cooker and let it do the job. Now, this is effortless! It sounds very tempting but a few minutes spent on browning the meat to get that delightful flavor and deep brown color seems well worth the time. One way to brown short ribs is to season them with salt and pepper and dredge in flour before browning. Another one is to season and brown first, then add the flour to thicken the sauce. I use the latter because it seems that this way you brown the meat and not the flour that covers the beef. The flour will be browned later when making a roux.
I like browning beef in my vintage copper pan which is anything but non-stick and gives me a lot of brown bits stuck to the bottom. It’s what I want! They help making a really flavorful sauce or gravy after de-glazing the pan with beef broth or red wine. To get the best out of browning, I like using rendered bacon fat. If you don’t have it on hand, plain butter will suffice.
