The best cut you've never cooked

The most incredible thing I've cooked this year, and a case for why a winter cut belongs on your summer table.

Last weekend I cooked the most incredible thing I've ever cooked: braised 99 Counties beef cheeks.

Being involved with 99 Counties is often a hard, stressful business with little reward — it's a difficult industry to be successful in. Access to this meat, and to some of the more unusual cuts we're able to offer, is one of the real rewards. A beef cheek would have sounded too exotic to a version of me a few years ago. I would've imagined it as gamey. Livery. Something to leave to a restaurant. It's none of those things. If I served it to you, you probably wouldn't know it wasn't a very delicate chuck roast. Slightly richer, a little denser in the nutrients you actually want. More tender. And not hard to cook.

My wife thought she'd have half. She ate the whole thing.

Why beef cheeks are hard to find

Cheeks aren't hard to source because they're rare — every animal has them. They're hard to source because most processors won't save them. Cheek meat is technical work: it sits close to the jaw, it takes clean removal, and skipping it is easier than doing it right. Ours save them for us because we ask, and because the crew there is careful. That's the whole reason we can offer them at all.

Which is a long way of saying: when we have them, we don't have many, and when we're out, we're out for a while.

The braise

The cheeks themselves are almost impossible to mess up. They're loaded with collagen, which means the only real requirement is low heat and enough time for that connective tissue to melt into gelatin. You cannot rush it and you can barely overcook it. If a fork meets resistance at three hours, give it another thirty minutes.

Serves 4 (or 2 if you're a big eater like me)

• 700g beef cheeks, trimmed of silverskin
• 1.5 tsp kosher salt
• 0.5 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 carrots, cut into chunks
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, smashed
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 cups dry red wine
• 2 cups beef stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 thyme sprigs

1. Season and preheat. Oven to 300°F (150°C). Pat the cheeks very dry and season all over. Let them sit at room temperature while the oven comes up.

2. Sear. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high until shimmering. Sear without crowding, about 4 minutes per side, until deeply browned. Transfer to a plate.

3. Build the base. Lower to medium. Cook the onion, carrot, and celery until softened and lightly colored, about 8 minutes. Stir in the garlic and tomato paste and cook 2 minutes more, until the paste darkens.

4. Deglaze. Pour in the wine, scraping up every browned bit from the bottom. Simmer until reduced by roughly half, about 8 minutes.

5. Braise. Return the cheeks and juices. Add stock, bay, and thyme. Liquid should come about three-quarters up the meat. Bring to a bare simmer, cover, and into the oven for 3 hours, until a fork slides in with no resistance.

6. Reduce. Lift out the cheeks and keep warm. Strain the liquid, skim the fat, simmer until it coats a spoon, about 10 minutes. Taste for salt.

On trimming

Trim the silverskin. It stays tough no matter how long you cook, and it's the difference between "this is falling apart" and "why is there a chewy bit."

If you don't want to use wine

A few substitutions that work, in rough order of how close they get:

• Dark beer (stout or porter): same 2 cups. Closest match for body and roasted depth. Reduce it a little less aggressively; beer turns bitter.
• Beef stock plus acid: 2 cups stock with 2 tbsp balsamic or red wine vinegar. The acid does the tenderizing and brightening the wine was doing.
• Unsweetened cranberry or pomegranate juice: 1.5 cups juice plus 0.5 cup stock. Fruity and tannic in a way that mimics wine well. Skip anything labeled "juice cocktail."

Whichever you use, bump the tomato paste to 3 tbsp and add a tablespoon of soy sauce or Worcestershire at the deglaze. Wine contributes glutamates and a savory backbone that juice and stock alone don't.

If you're using grass-fed cheeks, they run leaner. Keep an eye on the liquid and add a splash of stock if it drops below halfway.

The part that makes it summer

This is the actual argument of the post. The braise doesn't need to change. What goes next to it does.

Skip the mashed potatoes. Skip the polenta. Serve less meat than you would in January, and put two cold, acidic things on the table instead.

Shaved fennel and celery salad

This is the one that does the work. Cold, crunchy, aggressively lemony, and it cuts straight through the richness.

• 1 large fennel bulb (or 2 small)
• 2 to 3 celery stalks, from the inner part of the bunch
• A large handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves
• Fennel fronds and celery leaves, roughly chopped
• Juice of half a lemon
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Prep the fennel. Cut straight across where the stalks separate and turn pale green. You want the white bulb only. Halve it lengthwise, cut out the solid triangle of core at the base, then slice crosswise as thin as you can.

A mandoline is ideal. A sharp knife is fine and gets you closer to the right texture than a peeler does. Peeler ribbons are pretty but they drape rather than crunch.

Keep the feathery fronds, which are essentially an herb and taste like a milder version of the bulb. The thick stalks are stringy raw. Save those for stock.

Prep the celery. Trim the base and leafy top. Slice on a sharp diagonal, about 1/8 inch. Diagonal cuts give you longer pieces that match the fennel better than coins. If you're using outer stalks, run a peeler down the curve first to take off the strings. Keep the pale inner leaves.

The ice water step. This is worth doing. Drop the sliced fennel and celery into a bowl of ice water for 30 minutes. The cells take on water and the whole thing crisps up noticeably. Then dry thoroughly, salad spinner or towel, or the water dilutes the dressing.

Dress 10 minutes before serving, not earlier. Fennel weeps and goes limp if it sits. Combine everything, add lemon, oil, salt, and pepper, and toss hard. It should taste slightly too acidic on its own. That's correct next to the cheeks. If it tastes flat, add salt before you add more lemon.

Add the parsley at dressing time. It bruises and darkens sitting cold.

White beans with lemon and garlic

Room temperature or barely warm. Cold beans taste flat.

• 1 can cannellini or great northern, drained and rinsed
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• A strip of lemon peel
• 1/3 cup water
• Juice of half a lemon
• Salt, pepper, chopped parsley

Rinse the beans properly; the packing liquid is gluey. Warm the oil over medium-low with the garlic and lemon peel for 3 or 4 minutes, until fragrant and pale gold, not browned. Add the beans and water and warm gently for 5 minutes, shaking the pan. They should be loose and a little saucy.

Off heat: lemon juice, a big pinch of salt, pepper, another glug of raw olive oil. Fish out the garlic and peel. Fold in parsley and a little fennel frond.

For a creamier version, mash a quarter of the beans against the pan before the water goes in.

One can is plenty for two people alongside the cheeks. If you want leftovers, set a portion aside before dressing and add fresh lemon and oil when you eat it. Dressed beans keep 3 or 4 days but go soft and the lemon dulls.

Gremolata

Two minutes, and it changes the dish.

• Zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp packed flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1 small garlic clove

Pile them on a board and run your knife through the whole heap until fine and uniform, about a minute. Chopping them together is the point: the oils mingle and the garlic distributes instead of sitting in pockets.

No oil, no salt, no liquid. It's a dry condiment. Scatter it over the meat at the table, right before eating. If it sits, the garlic turns harsh and the zest loses its perfume. Make it while the meat rests.

One clove is enough for two. It should cut the braise, not dominate it.

Putting it together

Braise in the morning or the day before. Cheeks are better on day two anyway: cool them in the liquid, refrigerate, reheat gently.

Shave the fennel and celery an hour ahead and leave them in ice water. Warm the beans while the meat rests. Dress the salad and chop the gremolata in that last ten minutes.

Serve smaller portions of meat than instinct suggests. Crank the AC. Drink something cold and high-acid, a chilled Beaujolais or a dry rosé, that holds up to the braise without adding weight to it.

Get the cheeks

We have 16 packages in stock right now. Each package is two cheeks — a dinner for two, or four generous plates if you're serving them with the sides above. Once these run out I don't know when we'll have that many at once again. Order them when you see them.

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