Guinness and Coffee Braised Short Ribs with Colombian Panela
An Irish stout braise crossed with the Colombian sweet tooth: beef short ribs cooked in dark beer and strong coffee, sweetened not with sugar but with grated panela, the unrefined cane block that tastes of molasses and smoke.
- 1.8 kg bone-in beef short ribs, cut into 300 g pieces
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 onions, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 60 g panela, grated (or dark muscovado)
- 500 ml dry Irish stout
- 300 ml strong filter coffee
- 300 ml beef stock
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
- Salt
- Season the ribs and brown them hard in the oil in a heavy casserole, in batches. Set aside.
- Cook the onions and carrots in the same pot for 10 minutes. Add the garlic and tomato paste and cook 2 minutes more.
- Add the panela and let it melt and bubble for a minute. Pour in the stout, coffee and stock, add bay and pepper, and return the ribs.
- Cover and cook in a 150 C oven for 2 hours 45 minutes, turning the ribs once, until the meat gives to a fork.
- Lift out the ribs. Skim the fat, then boil the sauce hard for 10 minutes to reduce and thicken. Season, return the ribs, and serve.
Beef braised in stout is a Dublin classic that needs no defence: the beer's roasted bitterness cooks down into a sauce as dark as the meat. In Colombia, the same bitterness is balanced every morning in a cup of coffee sweetened with panela, the solid brown block of evaporated cane juice that every kitchen keeps for making aguapanela. Our kitchen put the two traditions in one pot and found they finish each other's sentences.
The coffee matters. Use a strong, freshly brewed filter coffee, not espresso, which turns acrid over three hours of cooking. The stout should be a dry Irish one rather than a sweet milk stout, because the panela brings the sugar. Grated into the pot at the start, the panela dissolves and caramelises against the beef's crust, and by the end the sauce has the depth of a mole without any of the chilli.
On the cut
Bone-in short ribs, cut across the bone in the English style into chunks of about 300 grams, give the sauce their gelatine as they cook. Brown them until they are almost black at the edges; timid browning makes a grey stew. The ribs are done when a fork turns in the meat without resistance, usually just under three hours.
Serve over a soft polenta or, in the Colombian spirit, over arepas split and buttered, with a sharp cabbage slaw to cut the richness. The leftover sauce, reduced further, is the best thing that can happen to a fried egg the next day.
