Tender Braised Beef Short Ribs

This impressive braised short ribs recipe has mouthwateringly tender beef slowly cooked in a caramelized onion and red wine broth.

Think of this dish as French onion soup meets red wine braised short ribs. It’s cozy, it’s rich, and it’s perfect for a cold evening. We’ll caramelize lots of onions for this dish, adding a sweet, rich onion flavor to the braising liquid. Then, to achieve that pull-apart texture, you’ll braise the beef for three hours, but all of that’s hands-off.

You’ll be left with unbelievably tender and flavorful beef and a thick, rich gravy swimming with caramelized onions. Your best bet is to serve this over something that soaks up all of it, like creamy polenta, grits, mashed potatoes, buttered noodles, or thick, crusty bread.

Key Ingredients

• Short Ribs: There are two popular kinds of beef short ribs sold in stores, chuck and plate. If you have the choice, use plate short ribs cut into smaller pieces (3 to 4 inches long), sometimes labeled English-style. They have the best balance of meat and fat and become especially tender when cooked low and slow. Chuck short ribs are smaller and a bit more irregular in shape, but will still work. We also use short ribs for these bbq beef ribs.
• Onions: Use yellow onions or sweet onions in this dish. Both will caramelize wonderfully.
• Tomato Paste and Garlic: The tomato paste adds richness. I love the double-concentrated tubes, since the tube and screw on lid make it easy to store what you haven’t used. Fresh garlic is best here.
• Flour: Use all-purpose flour to help thicken the gravy.
• Wine: A dry red wine is perfect. Use something you’d drink. We like Chianti, Bordeaux blends, or Merlot.
• Stock: The short ribs add a lot of beefiness to the gravy, so plain store-bought beef stock works nicely. However, to make this completely from scratch, here is our beef stock recipe.
• Herbs: We love fresh thyme in this and always add a bay leaf. Rosemary is nice, too, but can be overpowering. If you have it on hand, feel free to add ¼ to ½ teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary to the beef before braising in the oven.

Find the full recipe with measurements below.

How to Make Braised Short Ribs

Tip 1: Brown your short ribs. Before braising the beef, you really want to take the time to brown the short ribs on all sides first. This adds flavor to the pot, which we will use to build the braising liquid, and it adds flavor and texture to the beef.

Heat a Dutch oven or braiser, add olive oil, then brown on all sides. Since we have a lot of short ribs, you’ll likely need to do this in two batches.

Tip 2: Caramelize the onions. If you’ve ever made French onion soup, then you know the beauty of caramelized onions. They take a little time, but I promise it’s worth it for this showy dish.

To do it, you’ll add a little butter to the rendered beef fat in the pot (yep!). Then add your onions, give them a good stir, and cover the pot. Leave them for 10 minutes. When you uncover them, they will have softened and released some moisture into the pan. From there, uncover and continue cooking, stirring often, until they are deeply browned and smell sweet (30-ish minutes more).

Tip 3: Simmer the wine. As you are building the braising liquid, add wine to the pot. It adds so much flavor, and red wine braised short ribs are an absolute classic! Before adding anything else to the pot, simmer the wine for a few minutes to burn off some of the alcohol.

Tip 4: Cover with a lid and slowly braise in the oven. To get that pull-apart, tender beef, you need to slowly cook the short ribs for around 3 hours. Think of it as similar to making beef stew, where you want the fat and collagen to melt and the connective tissues to soften and become really tender.

Add the browned beef to the braising liquid, and make sure it’s mostly covered so it does not dry out. Then cook slowly, covered, in the oven for about 3 hours. After 3 hours, the beef will be shockingly tender and so delicious.

Serving Suggestions

You’ll be left with a lot of braising liquid. It’s thick, laced with sweet onions, and absolutely delicious (with or without the beef!). I highly recommend skimming the fat at the top of the pot. There’s going to be quite a bit. Once you do, you can serve the beef on or off the bone. A few bones may already have slid off the meat (it’s that tender). We remove the bones, place chunks of tender beef on top of polenta, grits, or mashed potatoes, then spoon a generous amount of the braising liquid over the top. You’ll probably run out of beef before the gravy, but I still think you should save it for spooning over something else for dinner another night.

This dish is intentionally rich. If you’d like something a little lighter to start or on the side, we love this fennel salad, peppy lemon vinaigrette over greens, classic roasted carrots, or these roasted carrots and parsnips.

More Mouthwatering, Tender Beef Recipes

• Melt in Your Mouth Beef Stew
• Perfect Shredded Beef Tacos
• Fall Off the Bone Oven Baked Beef Ribs
• Guinness Beef Stew