SOUL PLATE- SMOKED OXTAIL, CORNBREAD N GREENS
food that feeds the soul!
Hello again, here’s issue number #6 of unfiltered flavours+
I love oxtail, but I didn’t think it could get better than braised oxtail until now. This plate is pretty much as good as it gets. You’ve got smoked oxtail, collard greens with smoked turkey and my good good honey butter cornbread! The first bite of the meat took me into another dimension!
After watching bbq showdown back in 2020, I decided to actually take bbqing more seriously. That was the year I got my first ever bbq! For this cook I used my masterbuilt gravity smoker, I had quite a few things on the go whilst also filming so I didn’t have time to monitor my charcoal.
Now for the past week I’ve seen black diamonds AKA smoked oxtail all over my instagram. A page called destination smoke house have been slinging out smoked oxtail that literally falls off the bone with no force needed. They’re based in California, which meant if I even wanted to get a taste of this I was going to have to make it myself? Challenge accepted!
Cooking with soul is exactly what it says on the tin! I grew up around American family and my Jamaican family. Which means, I feel incredibly blessed that I was taught how to make cornbread, greens, peach cobbler, jerk, curry goat, mac n cheese and the list goes on. So on this news letter I’m going to share three beautiful recipes that have my absolute soul in them.
Flavours & Ingredients
With a recipe like this, you need MEATY pieces of oxtail. This requires you taking a trip to your butchers and making sure they’re cut thick, preferably where each joint ends. The seasoning is so basic, but when it comes to smoking meat that’s all you really need! I used a combination of salt, pepper, garlic granules, onion granules and the tiniest bit of cayenne pepper. THAT WAS IT!! The key is making sure you’re using granules because the coarseness helps to develop the bark.
I personally use diamond kosher salt, the salt you get from a supermarket like table salt is too fine, flaky salt is too coarse and there’s generally not a happy medium in most super markets. Kosher salt is the perfect coarseness for seasoning so I always order some online from Amazon.
I always get my collard greens from Sainsburys (labeled as “Greens”), they’re available all year round in there and they’re cheap. Greens are a leafy vegetable. Very similar to kale texture wise, but less rich in flavour. They’re like a mix between spinach and cabbage. That’s the best way to describe them.
When it comes to making collard greens you need to build serious flavours. You want to make sure you’re using a good chicken stock, if it’s not jiggling then it’s not a good stock. Of course you can use stock cubes, but they tend to have more salt and this means you’ll have to play around with the seasoning. I prefer using smoked ham hocks, but my butcher had smoked turkey legs and necks so I gave that a try this time and was NOT disappointed at all. I would say depending on where you live, it might be really easy to get hold of smoked turkey. I live in London, south to be precise and there’s no shortage of this stuff. I’ve made greens this way my whole life, I haven’t deviated away from either of these meats so I wouldn’t be able to tell you how to achieve the same flavours without them
Cornmeal is what you’ll need for cornbread, again you can pick this up in Sainsburys depending on where you live. If you can’t get it in a supermarket or any market then you could also just order it online. I like to use coarse cornmeal, I think it has a better bite and gives me the texture that I know and love with cornbread. It’s not supposed to be like a sponge cake, it’s meant to be a little denser but still light.
I use creamed corn, which you can get from an any East Asian supermarket. When I was little my family never used to blend the corn and I’ll be honest I don’t want chunks of corn in my cornbread! So I blend the creamed corn, because we want the corn flavour but don’t want the chunks. Apart from that, there’s no specialist ingredients that you’ll require. Just make sure you’re using good quality stuff.
Technique & equipment
Do you need a smoker to do this recipe? Yes. Or at least a good bbq with a lid that can be set up for indirect cooking. The oxtail has to be smoked, because it’s not just the flavour that changes but the texture. When you smoke meat low and slow, you build the bark and this extra flavours. To my knowledge, you can’t do that in an oven. So there’s no point trying to adapt this recipe for an oven, there’s so many steps you’d have to do differently.
You want to make sure you’re using good lump wood charcoal and I smoked this with oak wood chunks. Coal is your fuel, but the wood is your flavour!