Instant Pot Beef / Ox Cheeks with Red Wine

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Description

Here’s my recipe for beef cheeks cooked in my Instant Pot Duo v2 7-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker, 6 Qt, 5.5L. They’re cooked with vegetables, red wine and stock and have a Spanish/middle-eastern flavour.

Beef cheeks are very tough pieces of meat and can take all day to cook. Using a pressure cooker reduces that time right down to less than an hour.

Ingredients

  • 2 x whole uncooked beef cheeks
  • 2 brown onions – chopped 1cm
  • 4 carrots – chopped 1cm
  • 4 sticks of celery – chopped 1cm
  • 1 large glass of red wine
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • Beef or chicken stock
  • Picante pimentón
  • Ground cumin
  • 2 x bay leaves
  • Cooking oil – rapeseed, sunflower, light olive oil etc.
  • Cornflour
  • Salt and ground black pepper
  • Balsamic glaze
  • Parsley – chopped

Method

Cooking

  1. If the beef cheeks have an outer membrane, use a sharp knife to remove it.
  2. Season the beef cheeks with ground black pepper. Don’t use any salt.
  3. In a pan on the hob, brown the beef cheeks on all sides in the cooking oil.
  4. While this is happening, set the InstantPot (IP) to Sauté and add cooking oil.
  5. Sauté the onions, carrot, celery and bay leaves until softened.
  6. Add a couple of teaspoons of ground cumin and picante pimentón and stir through the sautéed vegetables.
  7. Deglaze the IP with the red wine.
  8. Add the tin of chopped tomatoes.
  9. Add the beef cheeks to the IP and cover with the stock.
  10. Put the lid on the IP, turn the pressure valve to Sealing.
  11. Press the Manual or Pressure Cook button and set the time to 50 minutes.
  12. Press the Keep Warm button to turn off this feature.
  13. Allow the cooking to complete and let the IP release the pressure naturally.
  14. When the pressure indicator valve has dropped down, Press the Cancel button and open up the IP.
  15. Carefully remove the beef cheeks and put to one side.

Reducing

  1. Give the IP a good stir and make sure nothing has stuck to the bottom.
  2. We need to reduce down the liquid in the IP, so press the Sauté button and leave the lid off. This will bring the liquid up to the boil and keep it on a rolling boil.
  3. Reduce the liquid down to half to a third of it’s original volume. For me, this took around 30 minutes.
  4. Press the Cancel button on the IP and unplug it.
  5. Slake a teaspoon of cornflour with some cold water and stir it into the remaining liquid. Depending on your preferred consistency, you may need to reduce or increase the amount of cornflour.
  6. Stir in a tablespoon of balsamic glaze to add a sweet/sour note.
  7. Taste the sauce for seasoning and add salt to taste.
  8. Put the beef cheeks back into the sauce.

Serving, portioning or storing

The meat at this point should be in large pieces – if not still whole, but it can be easily broken up as it’ll be super-tender. It can even be turned into pulled-beef and shredded up with a couple of forks.

Add the parsley just before serving.

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