Braised Short Rib Grilled Cheese at Home: Fall-Apart Beef, Gruyere and Cheddar on Crisp Sourdough

The grilled cheese had a good week. On Thursday 5 November Starbucks launched its holiday menu and, alongside the red cups and a tiramisu latte, listed a new Braised Short Rib Grilled Cheese, according to ABC News and a Yahoo Lifestyle roundup of the new items. Neither source describes the sandwich's bread, cheese or filling, so what follows is not a copy of it. It is a home version built on the same idea: the most tender beef you can manage, inside the most reliable sandwich there is.

Short ribs suit a sandwich because of their collagen. Cooked slowly in liquid, the connective tissue melts and turns the braising juices glossy. The useful measure is temperature, not the clock. ThermoWorks, the thermometer maker, aims for 95 degrees Celsius at the thickest part of the largest rib in its short rib braise, and checks for tenderness with a probe. Hit that and the meat falls away from the bone.

Do the braise on a Sunday and the sandwiches are a ten-minute job on any evening afterwards, which makes this a sensible dish for the cold weeks ahead.

Ingredients

Serves 4. Total time about 4 hours, most of it unattended: 25 minutes of work plus a 3 hour 20 minute braise.

• 1.2 kg bone-in beef short ribs, in 6 to 8 cm pieces
• 1 tbsp neutral oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 200 ml dry red wine
• 300 ml beef stock
• 2 sprigs thyme and 1 bay leaf
• Salt and black pepper
• 8 slices sourdough, about 1 cm thick
• 80 g softened butter
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 100 g Gruyere, coarsely grated
• 100 g mature cheddar, coarsely grated

Method

1. Heat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Pat the ribs dry and season generously all over with salt and pepper.
2. Heat the oil in a heavy casserole over medium-high heat and brown the ribs in batches for 3 to 4 minutes a side, until deeply browned. Set aside.
3. Pour off all but a tablespoon of fat. Cook the onion for 6 to 8 minutes until soft and golden, add the garlic and tomato paste and stir for 1 minute.
4. Add the wine and scrape up the browned bits, then boil for 3 minutes until reduced by about half. Add the stock, thyme and bay leaf.
5. Return the ribs, bones down, so the liquid comes about halfway up the meat. Cover tightly and braise for 3 hours to 3 hours 20 minutes, until the meat is very tender and a probe in the thickest part reads about 95 degrees Celsius.
6. Lift the ribs out, discard the bones and any large pieces of fat, and shred the meat. Skim the fat from the juices, boil them to reduce to about 150 ml, and stir enough back into the meat to moisten it generously.
7. Spread the outside of each bread slice with butter and the inside of 4 slices with mustard. Mix the two cheeses.
8. Build each sandwich with a third of the cheese, a quarter of the beef, then the remaining cheese, and top with a second slice, buttered side out.
9. Cook in a non-stick or cast-iron pan over medium-low heat for 4 to 5 minutes a side, pressing gently, until the bread is deep golden and the cheese has melted. Rest for 1 minute, then cut in half.

Tips, swaps and storage

Medium-low heat matters. High heat browns the bread long before the cheese melts through. A lid over the pan for the last minute helps if the middle is slow.

The braised beef keeps for 4 days in the fridge, covered, or can be frozen for 3 months in its juices. Reheat gently with a splash of stock. For a Thanksgiving week twist, add a spoonful of cranberry sauce to each sandwich. Swap the Gruyere for provolone or fontina, and a little horseradish stirred into the mustard gives a sharper bite.

Short ribs are not cheap, so a plate with a salad and pickles feeds four generously. The holiday menus will come and go, but a tin of this beef in the freezer is a very good thing to have in December.