Stewing on Oxtail

This cut of beef is prized for its toughness – treated properly, it turns everything it touches delectable. Anney and Lauren dig into the history and science of oxtail.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to say Are production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum and today we're
talking about oxtail we are, which was a bit out
of left field for me because I was like, Lauren,
what should we do? And you were like, oxtail, Okay, yeah, yeah,
let's do that. UM. This is a partially inspired by

(00:32):
by a recent trip of mine up to h Mart,
which is a chain of Korean grocers around Atlanta and
the United States. UM that also feature a lot of
a lot of other UM imported products. UM. And they've
got a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous meat section and UM. I

(00:54):
was looking at the oxtail because my brain always goes oxtail,
this will be cheap, and then it's not these days,
so yeah, yeah, UM. I actually got a little emotional
researching this one because my dad loved oxtail, and he
he loved a lot of things that were once UM

(01:14):
seen as you know, cheap or you didn't want to
be associated with those foods. UM. So he was kind
of embarrassed by it. UM that he would always order
it and he was always so excited when it was
on a menu which is pretty rare. Um. So I
was looking because now I have a craving, as as
almost always with our episodes, now I have a craving,

(01:37):
and so I was trying to see is there anyone
that's like during the pandemic delvery ox tail and uh
one of them was a restaurant that he liked. Um. Yeah, yeah,
so I'm hoping to get it. But yes, it was expensive.
It was much more expensive than I recall. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:58):
for for sure that is that is a thing that
has happened in the past couple of decades and we
will be talking about it. Um uh yeah, I mean
my my roommates and I have in the past made
made oxtail stews, which is a pretty pretty frequent way
to use it. Yeah. And you, right before we start recording,
made what I'm going to say as a promise, even

(02:20):
though I don't think you promised, uh to make once
we are able to hang out again in person, to
make something with braised oxtail. And I am going to
remember that, and I am very excited about it. I
did not promise it. Um. I very frequently run on
like fae rules, where like I'm careful with my language

(02:44):
and that's smart. But I will go ahead and upgrade
that to a promise the next time that we and
our superproducers kinda can hang out in person, I will
I will make y'all a braised oxtail dish. Yes. Yes,
I feel like the anti type of the Fay person,
where I like, take your words and I put a

(03:08):
meaning into them that was not there. Just campaign very persistently.
Either way, we're all doing work. Yes, yes, yes, And
I've never cooked with oxtail. Um. I know I've had it.
I've had it in tacos, I've had it in soup.

(03:31):
I know I had it in pasta once. And I
can't really remember this pasta other than it was delicious,
Like that's all I really remember. But it was amazing. Um.
And I think I've had it in fun But other
than that, I don't have. Yeah, I don't really have
a specific oxtail memories. So I'm excited about this. I'm
excited to make this memory. Oh yeah, uh huh. Yes.

(03:55):
But all right, let's get to our question. Oxtail. What
is it? Well, oxtail is a cut of beef that
includes bone and connective tissue and meat from the tail
um it's a it's a pretty basic butchery process. You
just skin the tail and then cut it into short lengths. Usually. Um,

(04:18):
it looks a little tiny bit like short ribs. Yeah,
um and uh okay okay. The term ox um. There
are a lot of different terms for cattle, depending on
a given animals sex and reproductive status and intended use.
An ox traditionally means an animal, usually a castrated male
that's kept for for doing work, uh, poland stuff, et cetera,

(04:43):
rather than being raised specifically for its meat um or
or milk in the case of female ox war box
in that that would grammer out yes um. However, these
days the term ox is applied in food and leather
industries to products from any kind of cattle. Um. So
the oxtail that you find in your supermarket probably does

(05:05):
not come from an ox in that traditional sense. But
I learned a lot about the castration of cows for
this episode and how that affects what they're called. Yep,
that's a yeah. That is the rabbit hole that I
did not intend to go down. And I was like, well,
all right, here we are. But uh, yeah, oxtail is

(05:30):
a really interesting cut because it's um. It's sort of
the opposite of most other cuts of beef that humans
like to eat. Uh. You know, like like you you
buy steaks because of their of their fat and tender meat. Um.
You buy ox tails because of their rubbery connective tissue
like like like oxtail contains a high proportion of not

(05:54):
meat um. And what meat is there is so tough
and so like encased in in muscle moving stuff. Because
if you've if you've ever seen living cattle, um, you
might have noticed that their tails are going just constantly
swiping it flies and expressing emotion um. And that kind

(06:14):
of constant use makes muscles lean and chewy, and it
builds up all of the rubbery tendons and cartilage and
coatings that facilitate that motion. So if you were to
cook oxtail quick and hot, like like a steak, it
would suck that that wouldn't be don't do that, um.
But if you cook oxtail low and slow, those those

(06:38):
rubbery bits which are made of collagen um, collagen being
the tough but stretchy chains of of twisted up proteins
amino acids um, which forms that the scaffolds of mammal tissue,
muscle and skin and bone, those particles of collagen will
break down, leaving you with tender bits of meat um

(06:58):
and a bunch of latin um and and gelatine. When
when it's warm is what makes bone broth or like
tongu katsu raman or something like that, or or any
kind of stock. It makes it kind of thick on
the tongue um. And when gelatine is cold, it's what
makes jello form up until like a solid but wiggly mold.

(07:22):
So you've got a lot of that, and plus an oxtail,
You've got that bone which contains rich buttery marrow. So
when you stew or braise oxtail down low and slow
and with some kind of liquid um, you wind up
with just like really rich, comforting, saucy meat. M hmmm mmmm,

(07:46):
so good, so good. There are versions of ox tail
soup in particular, and stews all over um and versions
of it bree served with greens, particularly butter beans, which
sounds amazing to me. Korea, China, Spain, Mexico, France, Italy, Britain,
South Africa, most of West Africa, Indonesia, Jamaica, and in

(08:07):
African American cuisine here in the US. Ox tails are
used in other places that I did not mention as well.
But that's just sort of a handful of um. Yeah.
I would say that in most places that have a
cattle industry, UM have some kind of traditional ox tails
to y um. And it is also a traditional ingredient

(08:29):
for making aspects and other gelatin based products like I
like tureens, especially in cultures such as Eastern European and
Russian Jewish cultures that do not eat pork. Ah. Well, okay,
what about the nutrition. Uh, it really depends on what
you cook it with. Um. But but unto itself, ox

(08:51):
tail is a little bit higher in fat and lower
in protein than many other cuts of beef. Um. It's
got a good smattering of minerals. You know, it will
fill you up and it will help keep you going.
But you know, watch your serving size. Eat a vegetable,
maybe parrot, with a little bit of extra protein. I
like how eating vegetables become one of our new slogans. UM,

(09:13):
we've been talking about a lot of comfort food. Yeah, yeah,
that's fair, that's fair. You know. One of my favorite
things about one of my favorite things about me is
when I get drunk. Like my what I used to
make was cauliflower. I just I love vegetable, so I'm

(09:33):
all for it. Um, that's amazing. I that is not
what I make when I'm drunk, like, let me just
And it wasn't super exciting either. I would just kind
of boil it and then put Frank's hots off the
top of But I know how much you like hot stuff,
and so I'm so hot sauce is a real good motivator. There.

(09:54):
You know what I've started doing. And I think this
is totally stress based, but I start did eating peppers
with hot sauce, like hot peppers with have you? Are
these cooked? Andie? What are you doing? Sometimes they're cooked?
Oh jeez? How what? Okay, I'm sorry, I need to

(10:17):
ask more questions. What level of hot peppers are you
putting hot sauce on and then consuming? I think that
the hottest I've gone is half nero, So that's not
that hot? Um okay, I if you say so, uh, well,

(10:38):
you know you've you've got to You've got to get
that adrenaline rush somewhere. I do. I do, And the
horror movies aren't doing it for me anymore. The running
is out the window, so it's it's peppers were not
oh darling. Um well, I also just want to throw

(11:00):
out there um a listener Aaron, and I hope to
share this with everyone soon. She made savor bingo cards.
Oh right, yeah, and and they're fantastic and really made
us laugh and I definitely want to play during an episode. Um.
But one of the things she put on there was
like savor slogans, and I think eat a vegetable now counts.

(11:25):
I should be one. I'm for it, I'm for it.
This is a philosophy that I that I both prescribe
and ascribe to. Um. Yes, okay, okay, So hopefully we'll
share that soon. Super fun. But meanwhile, we do have
some numbers for you. Yes, so, ox tails, which were

(11:48):
a food that was once regularly tossed thrown away, now
runs about four to ten dollars a pound as the
nose to tailed movement has become more and more popular. Yeah,
it's considered the only external awful meat. Yes awful, as
in oh F F A L right right? Which Um.

(12:13):
A lot of these cuts, which which typically include um
um organs and skin. A lot of these cuts have
typically been right like like bottom shelf, Like why would
anyone eat that if they don't have too kind of things?
But um, but over the past, uh, depending on what
they are, like like like hundred years to like decade

(12:34):
or two, they've become quite popular. Yes, because they're tasty. Yeah.
I was reading an article right before this was an
interview with someone who makes her restaurant makes a sale soup,
and she was saying like the price was getting so
much higher that she was not able to provide like

(12:55):
meat demand, um, make as much at the same ice anymore. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean it is one of the more or it
can be one of the more expensive cuts now depending
on the demand in your in your area. Uh um,
I mean, and you know it's one of those things
where like there's only one tail per animal, right so yeah, right,

(13:17):
well it has not been that way traditionally historically. No
uh no, no, um. And we'll get into the history,
but first we're going to pause for a quick break
for a word from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,

(13:42):
thank you, And we're back with the briefest ox history
ever perhaps. Okay, So it's cattle were born purely out
of human domestication that we've talked about it before sometime
between nine thousand and four thousand BC, so that's a
long time ago. Um. But if you look at ox specifically,

(14:03):
ancestors date back to prehistory. They sound very frightening, very huge.
I think they were called rox they had a cool
name too, but oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So
they've been around a while and going way back, humans
have commonly used oxen as yes, beast of burden um.
And they were easier to manage due to castration, didn't

(14:26):
go chasing after lady cows okaycked by. And when these
oxen could no longer provide the the work of carrying
things or pulling things whatever, then they were slaughtered for
food and none of that was wasted, including ox tail. Yeah,
and this does go so far back. Like the word

(14:46):
ox itself is old um uh. It's in in in
various forms that are quite related to the word that
we use today. Um. Its roots date back to the
Proto Indo European root uxen, meaning a male animal. So
thousands of years we've been using these very similar words,
which which which I think probably demonstrates like how long

(15:11):
cattle have been so important to to humans. Yes, like
that's just the word for that thing. That's what we
call it, right anyway, I would agree. Also sounds kind
of like Lord of the Rings esque. Yes. Yeah. Historically,
oxtail was viewed as an inferior cut of meat and

(15:33):
also a big time set when it came to properly
cooking it, because it did take a long time, and
it was therefore seen as a food for the poor
and enslaved. Most octail soups around the world have a
similar story. Soon after ox or cattle were introduced, the
less well off used oxtail for soup. During the fifteen hundreds,

(15:56):
in Jamaica, a confluence of cuisines and traditions came together
or Good West African, the indigenous people in Jamaica, the British,
the Spanish, the Indian um came together to create Jamaican
oxtail soup, which was a one pot dish full of spices,
very popular to this day. It was a dish that
could stretch and feed many mouths, which was of course

(16:19):
a benefit. Yeah, and this is one of those preparations
that uses butter beans for extra protein and right, just
all of these uh kinds of warming spices. All spice
and hot peppers are key ingredients. Um and yeah, yeah
there there's there's a lot of different recipes out there
for it, and they all sound incredibly delightful. So so

(16:40):
if you have not had that or seen a recipe
before it, look it up. Yes, yes, and butter beans
is one of my favorite foods, so right, yeah, this
is very exciting for me. I very rarely have them. Um,
I have like an emergency bag of frozen butter beans
and my refrigerator right now when in the quarantine, I

(17:03):
can I break down and eat these not yet hot
peppers and hot sauce, yes, butter being still waiting. This
is also I feel like quarantine is really teaching me
a lot about a lot of my friends different, um
different like juvenile, your food habits, like what they ate
growing up right like um uh like like my my

(17:24):
my roommate who grew up in Florida, always has a
bag of emergency shrimp in the freeze. I love the
yeah yeah, and her mom and her mom when she
calls will check up and be like be like, do
you have your emergency shrimp? That's so great. You've got
to have your emergency trip. It is for you. Yeah,

(17:48):
it is a habit that I am really benefiting from.
I will tell you, yes, yes, yes, yes, Oh man,
I have been craving shrimp lately. We I need an
emergency emergency shrimp. It's good for everyone. I feel like
right now feels like an emergency bag of whatever when

(18:10):
it's in my freezer at least all right. Um, back
to oxtail. Enslaved people in the United States were frequently
given the cheap cuts of meat and also use these
one pot cooking traditions and spices to cook oxtail. Um.
To this day, oxtail is frequently found on menus at

(18:31):
what I saw called true Southern restaurants. I saw people
argue that if it doesn't have oxtails on the menu,
it's not really a Southern restaurant. So I know. Um,
there is a very fun, slash spooky but almost certainly
a procafal origin story about ox sail soup in Hong Kong,

(18:53):
and all of those things are things that I love,
so I'm going to share it. Yeah. So, an unspecified
long time ago at Hong Kong University, a young male
student was really really stressed out studying for finals and
to make him feel better. His girlfriend, who lived in
the dorm above him, would make him oxtail soup and

(19:16):
I'll lower it down to his window with ropes. I
have a lot of questions about this, because I feel
like that's difficult enough with food that isn't prone toss soup.
But all right, I will all allow it. I shall
suspend my disbelief. But tragically she abruptly died, and after
the funeral, the young man returned to his dorm and

(19:38):
he smells something familiar. When he turned on the lights,
he saw a bowl of warm oxtail soup at the
window sill. He ran up the stairs to his girlfriend's
old dorm, knocked, but no one was there. Yes, good story.
I like that. The ropes are the part that you're
dubious about. Like the rest here find everything else. I'm like, huh,

(20:03):
wait a minute, I can't even walk from room A
to B without spilling soup. It's fairy when it comes
to oxtail soup in Britain, which was a soup of vegetables,
which wasn't is a soup of vegetables and beeftails um
that probably was the product of the Huguenots living in

(20:25):
London's East and in the seventeenth century or possibly not.
Another popularly told story with very little evidence suggests that
sometime between and seventeen ninety nine, a French dude going
through a bit of a rough patch. This was during
the French Revolution, after all, um, and a lot of

(20:46):
the niceties that the privileged upper class were accustomed to
weren't available anymore. This random French dude cajolta local tanner
for their ox tails, which normally would be tossed, and
from those he made a soup. And he honed this
soup over time, and in the eighteen hundreds this soup

(21:08):
made its way to England, where the English really embraced
it and made it their own. Or probably more likely,
French refugees fleeing the French Revolution introduced it to the British.
They yeah, kind of a similar thing where they not
been able to get their hands on the ingredients they

(21:28):
were used to during ox sails, made a soup flood
to England super woint with them. Makes sense. Yeah, perhaps
not as fun, but makes sense. And during the Victorian
era in England at Chef Alexis Sorrier really didn't like that,
so much food like ox sales were going to waste,
essentially because of stigma, especially when he would look to

(21:51):
other countries like France, and also especially when food was scarce,
and so you I have had chefs like that kind
of working too to get people to accept this food
that was generally thrown away. And then if we look
at America, early settlers generally ate all of the animal

(22:16):
that they slaughtered, including oxtail. UM. Cows came over with
the first explorers and columnists. That was another rabbit hole
I went on was how did cows get to the
United States? And there's a lot of information out out
there about that. UM. But yeah, pretty much when people
came over, explorers came over cows, games, they brought cows. Yeah.
As neighborhood britchers were replaced by grocery stores and mass

(22:39):
produced meat products awful, and oxtail as part of that
fell out of fashion and was stigmatized and because of that,
people didn't know how to cook it, so they wouldn't
buy it even if they wanted to. UM. It's only
recently with their Eyes of the Nose detail movement that
this is starting to change age and we are seeing

(23:01):
that reflected in rising prices. Yes, yeah, yeah, I found
a bunch of articles kind of kind of starting around
the middle of the nineteen nineties with chefs like like
Jack Peppaine recommending oxtail is an ingredient and dishes like
oxtail soup. Yes. Yeah, I found a handful of restaurants

(23:23):
in Atlanta that have it. Most of them were Jamaican,
not not Southern, but there were a few Southern that
did have it. But yeah, I've got a craving now,
I don't get it. I don't think they would have
it in like not an Asian like h smart specialty store. Um,
they have it at the Kroger in my house. Yeah, okay, yeah,

(23:46):
if you if you've never looked for it, like it's
it's usually just kind of like uh in in the
way that many American grocery stores are set up, just
kind of like kind of like off to the side,
like in a like like in a in the lowest
most shell of the of the meat section, like like
just way to one end of where the beef products are.

(24:06):
Like yeah, kind of kind of out off the beaten
of your eye line. You think it would be like
because I know the story I go to has hamhocks
and stuff. Yeah maybe maybe ever near that maybe, all right, see,
I because of pandemic now I go. I only go
like two to three weeks at a time, and I

(24:28):
I have my grocery list, so it's in the order
of the aisles. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, So I
try to put everything in its right place on my list,
so I'll spend this little time as possible there. Sure,
yeah you can also, I mean this is a whole
other step, but you could definitely ask your local butcher

(24:48):
if they carry it. I have to find my local butcher.
But oh I do know one. There's there's there's also
usually a human standing at the meat counter. You can
feel like, hey, meat counter human. That's that's That's what
I mean by local butcher um. Although certainly like if
if you have a a locally owned and operated butchery

(25:12):
in your area, I recommend supporting them, especially in these
times which are which are super rough for everyone in
the food industry due to covid um. I I haven't
checked whether I've been meaning to go do an order
it Spotted Trotter, which is one of the local Atlanta ones,
And I haven't checked whether they've got it, but it's

(25:33):
likely that they do all right. Well homework, Yeah yeah,
And that's about all we have to say about ox Sale.
I would love if listeners have experience or any uh
information we left out for you to send it to us. Absolutely, yes,
but we do have some listener mail for you. We do,

(25:55):
and we'll get to that right after we get back
from a quick break for a word from our sponsor.
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with it's like a charging bull, right sure, yeah,

(26:31):
Mary wrote, I just listened to your episode on listener
mail and had to giggle when you got to the
part about the snail. Okay, sidebar, I love that we
talked about the snail for like probably seven minutes. Yeah,
it was a long snail aside. I loved every second
of it, all right, She continues, My daughter recently found

(26:52):
a snail out in the yard and has now become
a pet. Its name is Shelly. Oh. Then they found
a baby and its name she Le Jr. I thought,
if nothing else, you would enjoy the pun. Attached as
a picture of Shelley and also of the three cats
that shared docile with us. We are still debating about
who is in charge, and the cats keep insisting that

(27:13):
we are wrong. Yep, that's that's what cats do. Yeah,
you know, I haven't lived with the cat in a
long time, but I find that cats do insist upon that. Um,
And I'm so I've just really come around to snails

(27:34):
being very cute. Shelly j were very cute. They are.
They're they're little, they're little eye stalks and there, and
they're little feeler things tentacles, your feeler ticles. They don't
sound cute ey stalks as Liller tentacles, but somehow it works.

(27:55):
Oh gosh, um, Chris for I was listening to your
mustard episode with my wife the other day and it
almost immediately reminded us of the time we visited the
Mount horrib Mustard Museum. Apparently just goes by the National
Mustard Museum. Now, we live in Michigan, but we often
visit Wisconsin. At the time, one of our friends went

(28:17):
to the University of Wisconsin and Madison. The museum is
close to campus, so we decided to check it out.
After a day of visiting apple orchards, wineries, and breweries,
maybe all the local craft beverages helped, but the museum
was actually quite fascinating. Seeing thousands of mustard tins and
memorabilia in such a small place is pretty shocking at first,

(28:39):
but then when you realize how versatile mustard is, the
whole thing makes a lot more sense. Of course, we
could not leave without a cheesy souvenir. We brought home
a delightfully tacky pennant shaped magnet that says poupon you.
It still lives prominently on our refrigerator. Speaking of refrigerators,

(29:00):
I counted six different kinds of mustard in ours just now.
I so desperately want to go to this museum. Um,
so many listeners have written in about it. Please keep
writing in. I love it. Oh my gosh, yeah it does.
It does sound amazing. And now I'm trying to mentally

(29:21):
count the number of mustards in my fridge, and it's
it's probably at least six. I'm gonna say a solid
tie between between me and Chris. I I have three, um,
but I go through them very fast, so you know,

(29:44):
my rate of consumption is high. But you're but you're
right right, your your types. I don't have any representatives
spread it out, sure, but yeah, I've got like a
dijon and a grainy and traditional yellow American mustard. Those

(30:04):
that I mean, that's really, that's really what you need
most or what you need most. Apparently, yes, it is,
it is. I think I've got a few different kinds
of spicy mustard in there, and a few different like
a couple different kinds of grainy and I'm I'm counting,
although maybe I shouldn't some of the little packets of

(30:24):
um hot mustard that you get sometimes in Chinese delivery,
which my roommate for some reason, insists upon storing in
the refrigerator afterwards. Yes, yes, it's got to be near
the emergency shrimp, emergency Chinese backets of mustard emergency yep, well,

(30:49):
listeners um. Thanks to both of them for writing in.
If you've got your emergency food you want to share
with us, or your sale pictures or your mustard museum stories,
any of that, we love it. You can email us.
Our email is hello at savor pod dot com. We're
also on social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,

(31:09):
and Instagram at savor pod, and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is a production of My Heart Radio.
For more podcasts to my Heart Radio. You can visit
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listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our
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for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way.