Oven Roasted Ox Tails

Oven Roasted Ox Tails

I would have never heard of ox tail soup if my grandmother hadn’t made the soup. I never heard of it being cooked by anyone else. My husband loved it, but I never bothered to fix ox tail anything for a couple of reasons. First, why should I bother when gramma would do? Second, it just sounds a little on the icky side. And third, as it turned out, ox tails are usually more expensive than I care to pay.

But, years have gone by and gramma isn’t around to cook them anymore. They taste so good that I got over the ‘icky’ part. And I still can’t really afford them, but Jerry loves them, so I fix them occasionally.

Here is the fling it in the pan recipe for ox tails, along with a few variations to the recipe.

First, you need 2 to 4 pounds of ox tails. I had 3 pounds for this pan. They seem to be a little thicker than I usually buy, but that is what was available. Anyway, here is the way I cooked this batch of ox tails.

First I sprayed the skillet with cooking spray. Then I heated it pretty hot and sprinkled my salt, pepper, and garlic powder in the bottom of the pan. Then I browned the ox tails. I took them out of the skillet and sliced an onion in the bottom of the pan. You can do your onions two ways. If you want the onion to pretty much dissolve into the juice that cooks out of the meat, then just leave it in the bottom of the pan, and put your meat back in on top of that. Or, you can brown the onion and take it out of the pan. Put the meat back in and put the onion on top of the meat. It gives the dish a different look when it is done, but it pretty much tastes the same.

Next, I put the lid on the skillet and put the meat in the oven at 275 degrees for about 4 hours. Ox tails take a long time to cook to really tender. I added potatoes, and cooked for another couple of hours. It is basically done long when the potatoes and meat are tender. For this batch, I put a few stalks of celery in right at the start because I happened to have celery in the refrigerator. The celery adds a bit of flavor, but it isn’t necessary for the dish to taste really good. You can add carrots if you like them. Or, you can just cook the ox tails all by themselves without any vegetables. They are good with any side dishes, breads, or salads.

Ox tails make a great soup also. You just put them in water or beef broth or both, and boil them. Add a few potatoes, carrots, green beans, or whatever you like to put in soup. If you haven’t tried them before, I think the oven roasted recipe is the best way to start. That will give you a better idea of exactly how the meat tastes. If you have leftovers, which is very doubtful, then you can make soup out of that.

Remember, any recipe is just one cooks idea of how something can be cooked. They probably cook the same dish about ten different ways. Adjust any recipe to suit yourself and your family.

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Barbara