Slow-Braised Beef Shin

Heat the oven to 150C/300F.

Pat the beef dry on every side with kitchen paper.

Season the pieces all over with the 6g of fine salt.

Heat the oil in a heavy casserole over medium-high heat until it shimmers and runs thin across the base.

Brown the beef in three or four batches, leaving a couple of centimetres of bare metal around every piece. Crowding the pan is the one thing that ruins this dish before it starts: the steam coming off the meat cannot escape, the pan drops below browning temperature and the beef goes grey and leaks its juice instead of crusting.

Give each piece 3-4 minutes a side, until it has a deep brown crust and lifts off the base without tearing.

Move each batch to a plate as it browns.

Turn the heat to medium and add the onions, carrots and celery to the same pan.

Cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring, until the onions have softened and gone translucent at the edges.

Stir in the garlic and cook for 1 minute, until it smells sweet.

Add the tomato puree and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly, until it darkens from bright red to brick and stops smelling raw.

Pour in the wine.

Scrape the base of the pan clean with a wooden spoon while the wine bubbles, until nothing is left stuck to the metal. That brown film is the whole flavour base of the braise, and anything still welded to the pan now will still be there when you serve.

Simmer for 4-5 minutes, until the wine has reduced by about half and no longer smells sharp.

Return the beef and any juice on the plate to the pan.

Pour in the hot stock, which should come about two-thirds of the way up the meat rather than covering it. A batch of the chicken stock in this collection covers this pot with plenty to spare.

Tuck in the bay leaves and the thyme sprigs.

Bring it to a bare simmer on the hob, where a bubble breaks somewhere on the surface every second or two. The slow-cooked beef ragu in this collection is held at exactly the same heat for the same reason.

Cover with a tight lid and slide the pot into the oven.

Look at the liquid after 20 minutes. It should barely be moving, and if it is bubbling steadily, turn the oven down to 140C/275F. A braise held at a boil squeezes the fibres tight and dry however long you leave it.

Cook for 3 to 3.5 hours in total, turning the pieces over once at the halfway point.

Expect the meat to feel tough at the two-hour mark, tighter than when it went in. Shin is dense with collagen and it seizes before it gives, so that stage is the middle of the process rather than a sign to stop, and a pot pulled out then leaves you with dry meat sitting in thin liquid.

Test with a fork rather than a clock: push it into the thickest piece and twist. Done shin shreds apart with no resistance at all, and anything that springs back wants another 30 minutes.

Lift the pot out of the oven and stand it, lid on, for 30 minutes.

Leave it the full half hour. Meat straight from the oven is drier than the same meat rested, because it draws the liquid back in as it cools.

Tilt the pot so the fat gathers at one side and spoon it off.

Fish out the bay leaves and thyme stalks.

Look at the sauce, which should coat the back of a spoon and slide slowly off it.

Lift the meat onto a warm plate and boil the liquid down for 5-10 minutes if it is any thinner than that.

Slide the meat back into the sauce.

Season the sauce with the ground peppercorns.

Taste and add fine salt, bearing in mind the reduction has already concentrated whatever the stock brought.

Scatter over the parsley.

Serve in shallow bowls with thick slices of bread. The everyday white tin loaf in this collection is the right thing for mopping the pot out.