Cooking Over Fire - Vol.2 

Cooking Over Fire - The Series… 

We’re continuing our series of Cooking Over the Fire with another recipe from one of Birmingham’s finest independent restaurants- to keep giving you amazing flavours whilst you’re stuck at home. This next recipe is definitely one to keep when it comes to cooking wood-burning recipes at home. 

The recipe comes from head chef Andy Stubb from Andy’s Low and Slow, famous for their Texas inspired BBQ + Modern Mexican, with his Wood Fire Ragu. Here’s what he had to say about the dish  “This is one of my favourite dishes in the world, if you use amazing produce and dedicate the time to it.  You will be rewarded with a beautiful, rich bowl of food.”

For this recipe, you will need:

• 500g of aged fatty beef mince, coarse ground.
• 200g of free range fatty pork mince, coarse ground.
• 1 glass of white wine.
• 1 tin of good quality chopped tomatoes.
• 200ml of beef or veal stock.
• 8 heritage tomato.
• 4 shallots.
• 1 stick of celery.
• Half a carrot.
• 100g tom puree
• Cooking oil and butter.
• Thyme and rosemary.
• Flavoured salt.

Method 

1. If using a BBQ build a small fire one side of your BBQ leaving room to move your pan away from the heat.

2. Dice your shallots, carrot and celery. Get a large cast-iron or similar pot and heat two tbsp of oil and a good nob of butter.  
3. Sweat this down making sure not to colour, if the fire is too hot, move the pot away from the fire and cook the other side.
4. In a separate pan place directly over the heat and brown your mince in batches, the idea here is to build flavour by browning the mince, it will let out water and fat, cook it hard until all the water goes and the mince is brown.
5. Season the mince with your flavoured salt, I make a tomato vine and wild garlic salt for this. Take the mince out as each batch is browned and rest it in a bowl.
6. While this is happening, keep an eye on your onions as not to colour and roast the heritage tomato over the flames, you want them to be cooked till soft and nicely charred.
7. When the onions, carrots and celery are soft add the tomato puree and combine, cook out for five mins. 
8. Add your browned mince and onion mixture together in the large pan that you will be cooking in, in the pan you browned the meat in, deglaze it with a glass of white wine and add this to the onion and meat mix.
9. Add the charred tomato, tin of tomato and stock, mix it all together and bring to the boil over the hottest part of the BBQ.
10. Once it boils move it away from the heat and keep it simmering, the idea now is to cook everything low for at least two hours, add the herbs and keep an eye on it, if you have a lid on your BBQ close it, this will add a bit of smoke to the dish.
11. Season with lots of black pepper and salt. 
12. After two hours simmering it will be thick and rich, before serving check for seasoning and add a glug of sherry vinegar.

Enjoy!

Share your recreation of Andy’s Wood Fired Ragu with us let us know how the recipe worked for you! Tag @harringtonwoodfuel and @andy_low_n_slow in snaps of your recreations of this dish!

Also, don't forget to check out Andy's webshop Low N Slow to go, where there’s "a whole lotta BBQ going on to have for home delivery”!