5-Ingredient Short Rib Ragu Recipe

Although this dish is simply divine, know that this short rib ragu recipe isn't a quick undertaking that you can whip up in 20 minutes on a weeknight. It takes time to cook beef ribs to perfection before combining them with the other ingredients to create a tantalizing sauce. But what this recipe developed by Stephanie Rapone of Pantry to Plate Meals requires in time, it makes up for in simplicity. 

With just five main ingredients, you don't have to spend hours prepping a million veggies or spices you've never touched before in your life. In fact, you may have almost everything you need in your kitchen right now. The recipe will end up taking roughly three hours to make from start to finish, but most of that is time spent cooking the ribs. So, on a night when you have a little extra time to spare, try your hand at making this ragu. As Rapone suggests, you can serve it with pasta, risotto, or even a baked sweet potato. Your family or guests will not be disappointed!

Aside from oil, salt, and pepper, which you likely keep stocked in your pantry, this beef rib ragu recipe requires only five main ingredients: four pounds of beef short ribs, a yellow onion, Dijon mustard, a can of San Marzano tomatoes, and 3 cups of low sodium beef broth. If you start searching your kitchen to see if you have everything on hand, Rapone warns against making substitutions if you come up short. "Since there are so few ingredients, keeping to these specifics is pretty important. For mustard, a whole-grain mustard could be used instead, but I wouldn't do a spicy brown mustard or regular yellow mustard," she says, adding that the tomatoes, in particular, are important. "The tomatoes are the one ingredient I would stress to buy the good ones! They are a major flavor here, so it's worth a couple extra bucks."

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 F first thing, as you want it to be at the right temperature when you're ready to start cooking. Then, place your beef ribs on a cutting board or plate, and use the salt and pepper to season all sides. Rapone calls for a tablespoon of salt and a teaspoon of pepper to disperse equally between the four pounds of beef ribs. Just do your best to season the ribs equally.

Using a Dutch oven (or a Dutch oven substitute if you don't have one), heat up the oil until it's almost smoking. Place the short ribs in the hot oil, and brown the ribs on all sides. This should take roughly three to four minutes per side, so about 10 to 15 minutes total to get the ribs nicely seared. When the ribs are done browning, remove them from the Dutch oven, and place them on a plate.

Use the time while the short ribs are browning to peel and chop your onion. Then, after removing the short ribs from the dutch oven, change the heat on the stove to medium and add the chopped onion to the pot. Cover the onion, allowing it to cook undisturbed for roughly three minutes before removing the lid to stir. Continue cooking the onion like this, stirring every two to three minutes for roughly seven to nine minutes total. The goal is for the onion to be soft and just starting to brown. When the onion is sufficiently cooked, stir in the Dijon mustard.

Once the onions are ready and seasoned, it's time to start cooking the rest of the ingredients for your sauce. Add the short ribs back to the Dutch oven, then pour in the can of tomatoes and the beef broth. Stir the pot to mix the ingredients together, then cover, and bring everything to a boil. 

It's important not to brush past this step — bringing all the ingredients to a boil is particularly important. "This ensures the ingredients are at the right temp, rather than the oven having to do all the work to bring them to temp," says Rapone. And, as she points out, relying on the oven to do the "heavy lifting" of bringing the ingredients to temp would significantly increase the cooking time for the ragu.

Once the ingredients are brought to a boil, transfer the pot to your oven, and braise the contents for two and a half hours. If, for some reason, you're notoriously bad at paying attention to cooking times, here's the good news: Rapone says it's pretty much impossible to overcook the ribs. "Sometimes I'll even throw it in for two hours, then just turn the oven off and let it hang out for another hour," she says. Ultimately, what you want is for the meat to literally fall off the bones. "If you can't grab a bone with a pair of tongs and have it slide out of the meat, it needs to keep cooking," Rapone says.

Once the meat has cooked to the point of falling off the bones, take the pot out of the oven, and remove the lid. Use tongs to take the ribs out of the pot, and set them aside on a plate. If any of the meat has fallen off the bones and is loose in the Dutch oven, be sure to remove it and set it aside as well. Then, spoon off and discard any excess fat that rose to the surface of the tomato sauce. 

At this point, give everything 10 minutes to rest and cool. This will make the next steps easier. "It's just so darn hot. You could blend the sauce right away, but there's no real reason to since the meat would be too hot to shred," Rapone notes.

Once the sauce and meat have had a chance to cool slightly, carefully blend the cooking liquid until smooth. The key word here is "carefully." Rapone recommends an immersion blender rather than a regular blender, because blending hot liquids can be dangerous. That being said, if you don't own an immersion blender, it's incredibly important to allow the steam to vent from your blender as you blend. "Place [the sauce] in a blender or food processor, and remove the little center part of the lid. Place a towel over that, and leave a little vent for steam to escape," says Rapone. "Pulse two to three times, then remove the towel, and let the steam vent. Repeat the process until [the sauce] is smooth. The trick is you don't want to let the pressure build up inside the blender, or it will explode super hot sauce all over." Again, it's imperative to work super carefully here.

Once the sauce is smooth, remove all the beef from the ribs, and shred. "I like putting on gloves and going through it with my hands," says Rapone. "It's still pretty hot to touch with bare hands, and the gloves help with that. I don't think you can really get the connective tissue and other less desirable parts out with a fork. Hands are truly the best tool!" 

Add the shredded meat to the cooking liquid, and stir well to combine. Just like that, your ragu is officially done! 

When your ragu is finished, it's common to serve it over cooked pasta (try a penne or tagliatelle), but that's not your only option. Rapone suggests trying it on top of risotto or a baked sweet potato, but you could also try it with polenta. And if you have a little extra time, consider making a ragu casserole of sorts. Simply place the sauce in a baking dish, and layer it with thinly sliced potatoes brushed with oil and salt. Bake the entire dish covered in foil until the potatoes are soft, then remove the foil, and cook until the potatoes turn a golden brown.