Braises, due to their long cooking times, typically develop rich, deep flavors—the “brown” flavors of searing and reduction. The ideal complement to these flavors is the Italian troika of parsley, lemon zest, and garlic, called gremolata (sometimes spelled gremolada). The parsley gives a clean freshness, the lemon a citrusy brightness, and the garlic a complex zing. The vivid green and yellow against the brown backdrop of the braise is a perfect visual parallel of the flavor contrasts.
Gremolata is the traditional garnish for osso buco (here), but it can serve to enhance almost any braised dish. Make it in any ratio you wish; my preference by volume is about 6 parts minced fresh flat-leaf parsley, 2 parts minced fresh lemon zest, and 1 part minced garlic.
Of course, gremolata can be varied in any number of ways. You can change up the herb; see, for instance, my lamb shanks with mint gremolata (here). Or use basil, and you’re only a couple ingredients away from a classic Genovese pesto. It’s also very close to being a salsa verde; if you wanted to move it in that direction you could add some olive oil and good wine vinegar to make a sauce for roast chicken or grilled meats. You could also add an anchovy or capers or nuts. But for braises, I generally keep it simple: parsley, lemon zest, garlic.
A few points of technique. I prefer chopping everything by hand, but you can pulverize the ingredients with a pestle or make a big batch in a food processor. I always remove the green germ from the garlic since it’s going to be placed raw on hot food and thus get very little cooking (the germ can be bitter when raw). I mince the garlic till it’s a virtual paste and use a Microplane to zest the lemon. Then I combine the garlic and zest with the minced parsley, giving it all a final chop to further shorten the zest and help to mix and distribute the ingredients. Finally, gremolata suffers if it’s left out too long, so prep it just before you’re ready to serve.
2 tablespoons minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons grated fresh lemon zest
1 teaspoon finely minced garlic
• COMBINE all ingredients on a cutting board and CHOP and MIX till all of the ingredients are well distributed. USE within the hour.
It should come as no surprise that one of the most powerful ways to improve your cooking overall is to make your own stock. It may come as a surprise, however, to learn how easy stock is if you simply plan ahead. Somehow American home cooks have got it in their heads that stock-making requires giant vats, results in a huge mess, and is a weekend “project.”
I make small batches of stock all the time from what’s on hand during the week. It’s a matter of putting flavorful ingredients in a pot, covering them with water (the great flavor extractor), popping it into a low oven for several hours, and then straining.
Although you can braise in a ready-made liquid—beer, wine, milk, pureed tomatoes—certain braises benefit greatly from homemade stock. The pot roast (here), lamb shanks (here), and osso buco (here) in this book call for plentiful stock, as the cooking liquid will become the finished sauce.
As far as using canned or boxed stocks… well, I’d rather you use a combination of wine and water. That said, the quality of commercially prepared stocks is improving, so if you insist on using stock but don’t want to make it, try to find a high-quality, organic brand—and read the ingredient list.
Since I’m always urging people to recognize that they can raise the caliber of their food tenfold by making their own stock, I see no reason not to do so here. I have lots of stock recipes in my books and on my apps, but really, if you can braise, you can make stock.
Chicken and veal bones are best, though any bones will do. Adding more vegetables will result in more flavor, but use whatever you have available and you’ll be fine. I like to add a tablespoon or two of tomato paste to a quart/liter of stock while it’s cooking. Cracked peppercorns, garlic, and, at the end, fresh parsley or thyme go well, too.
A few roasted bones
1 Spanish onion, quartered
1 carrot, broken in half
1 bay leaf
Kosher salt
• PLACE whatever bones you have in a pot. ADD enough water to cover the bones by about 2 inches/5 centimeters. PUT the pot, uncovered, in a 200°F/95°C oven for at least 4 hours and up to 10 hours. ADD the onion, carrot, bay leaf, and a good pinch of salt, with more water to cover the ingredients if necessary. BRING to a simmer on the stovetop, and then RETURN the pot, still uncovered, to the oven (or REDUCE the burner to low) for another hour. STRAIN and CHILL.
Many braises improve after being chilled. Once cooled, as with a stock, a layer of fat will congeal on the surface. In olden times, before cooking oil was widely available, an instruction to skim the fat off the top and discard it would have been considered foolish. Now that we’ve been taught to fear fat and instead use cheap vegetable oil, we toss that fat without thinking.
Well, think.
Maybe that fat is really tasty. Maybe that fat, while not needed in a rich braise, is nonetheless redolent of the flavors of the braise, would make exceptional roasted potatoes or be delicious spread on a hot, toasted baguette with the meal. One of my wonderful testers, Matthew Kayahara, having made the braised duck legs (here), cooed about the abundant duck fat, perfumed with star anise, that he’d saved from the braising liquid (he would later roast root vegetables in the aromatic fat).
In the days before grocery stores and refrigeration and readily available cooking oils, a cook wouldn’t have dreamed of throwing out perfectly good fat. But by all means, throw out the fat. So what if it’s a great ingredient, loaded with flavor? Just go on, toss it, it’s OK. There’s plenty of vegetable oil in the cupboard.
Because braises are cooked for a long time, dried herbs work well, provided the dried herbs are in good condition. If the jar of oregano in your cabinet has a faded label, it’s time to replace it. The best dried herbs, of course, are those you grow and dry yourself—this makes a big difference. Every fall I cut back my sage, oregano, thyme, and any other tough-stemmed herbs (often referred to as the “hard” herbs) and lay them out on the counter for a few days till they’re brittle; then, I bag them and store them out of the light.
As with all cooking, fresh hard herbs can be added early in the process because their flavor can stand up to that duration. Fresh soft herbs—those with soft stems, such as basil, parsley, and chives—should be added at the very end of cooking or just before serving. Their flavors are volatile and will be lost if cooked for a long time.
If the braising liquid will be pureed to use as the sauce for the dish, or will be served without being strained, aromatic herbs with woody stems, peppercorns, bay leaves, and other seasonings you don’t want served in the finished dish can be wrapped in a small piece of cheesecloth, referred to as a sachet d’épices, and submerged in the braising liquid. The inedible seasonings can then be easily removed after the cooking. A standard sachet includes parsley stems, dried herbs, bay leaf, cracked peppercorns, and garlic.
Another method for making aromatics easy to remove from the braising liquid is to make a bouquet garni: a bundle of aromatic herbs and vegetables bound with string. A common bouquet includes leek leaves, carrot and/or celery, fresh parsley and thyme, and a bay leaf all tied up in string. Bouquets such as these should be added during the last 60 to 90 minutes, the time needed for them to impart their flavor; longer and they can begin to disintegrate into your sauce.
I noted these ingredients earlier, but they are worth singling out in the braising larder. Honey has a kind of magical effect, rounding out or harmonizing the complex flavors of the braise. Fish sauce adds depth of flavor, an effect often referred to as umami, which translates more or less as savoriness. In the same way that salt can enhance flavor without your noticing the salt, so too can fish sauce enhance flavor without your tasting fermented fish, and honey can alter the flavor without your detecting sweetness.