12 Hour Cottage Pie
Ever ordered a cottage pie in a really nice gastropub, and been a little underwhelmed and what you ended up eating? I find they always look fantastic, served in their own individual pots, but when you tuck in, they never have that depth of flavour, they’re ‘okay’ but just a bit ‘weak’. This recipe is very much not, I’ve raided my entire toolbox, using every trick in the book to boost the flavours here. I promise, this will be the best cottage pie you will have ever had, you’ll need an early start (it takes 12 hours in the oven) but boy is it worth it!
Prep Time: 30 Mins
Cook Time: 12 Hours
Difficulty: Medium
Serves: 6
Ingredients
Garlic - 1 bulb
Oxtail - 2 to 3 medium sized (c.600g)
Onions - 2
Smoked Streaky Bacon - 250g
Red Wine - 1 bottle (medium quality)
Beef Stock / Bone Broth - 350g
Carrots - 3
Minced Beef - 1kg
Bay Leaves - 3
Juniper Berries - 6 to 8
Thyme - leaves of 1 sprig
Dijon Mustard - 2 tbsp
Gravy Powder - 2 tbsp
Balsamic Vinegar - 1 tbsp
Potatoes - 1.5kg
Butter - 75g
Method
7:00am - Roast Garlic
Start cooking about 12 hours before you need to serve, the times here are for a 7pm serving time (which unfortunately means a couple of hours of early morning cooking)
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (200°C for non-fan ovens). First up in cooking the perfect cottage pie is to get the most flavour out of the garlic, to do that we’re going to roast it. Remove the loose skin from the outside of the garlic bulb, place on a square of foil with a little olive oil Wrap the garlic in the foil and bake in the oven for 45 minutes. Once cooked remove and allow to cool until needed.
Geeky bit: The reason we slowly roast the garlic is it undergoes a series of reactions; the breakdown of allicin (the thing that gives it that acrid garlicy taste) giving it a gentler more complex flavour, the breakdown of the long carbohydrates that garlic has into shorter sugar strands (making it sweeter), and the Maillard reaction (which browns food when it roasts) giving it a deeper flavour. All three combine to give this amazing flavour that will really boost the cottage pie.
7:20am - Browned Oxtail
Place the oxtail in a frying pan with a tiny bit of oil (to stop it sticking) on a medium-high heat and turn every few minutes to allow it to brown all over. Once you’ve got a nice brown all over, remove from the heat (don’t wash up the frying pan yet you’ll need it for the next steps). Transfer the oxtail to an ovenproof dish (like a le creuset, etc) and place in the oven uncovered.
The garlic will likely still be in there, if so leave the temperature at 180°C until the garlic’s cooked. Once the garlic is out of the oven though leave the oxtail in and lower the temperature to 120°C (140°C for non-fan ovens)
Geeky bit: The garlic’s reaction will only happen at over 150°C so the oven needs to stay hot whilst it’s in, after that the oxtail will benefit from a lower temperature (120°C) as we want to slow down a couple of reactions; the transfer of collagens to gelatin (which creates tender, flavour-rich meat), and also the Maillard reaction (the very complex amino acid / sugar reaction that occurs when meat browns), both work better prolonged, and the lower temperature helps prevent the water in the meat from evaporating whilst these reactions occur i.e. we want it cooked ‘low and slow’.
07:40am - Bacon
Now the frying pan’s free, it’s time to chop up the bacon (about 1cm strips) and add to the frying pan on a low heat, stirring occasionally.
After about 25-30 minutes of very gentle frying, the fat will suddenly render (this is what we’re waiting for), you’ll see the white fatty bits in the middle of the bacon lose their colour / disappear and the pan will quite quickly increase in oil (the bacon should also be a nice crispy golden colour by this point). Turn off the heat an using a slotted spoon transfer the bacon to the oven dish that has the oxtail in, add about a quarter of the bottle of wine, and return to the oven.
Geeky bit: Most recipes call to render the fat from bacon on a medium heat for about 10 minutes, the problem is this temperature is too high and the bacon meat will start to burn before the fat fully renders (turns to liquid) so you’re left with rather unpleasant chewy fatty bits. Fat renders at quite a low temperature (around 60°C) so if you cook the bacon at a lower temperature for much longer, you’ll get the chance to remove all the fat before the bacon starts to burn, and be left with extra crispy bacon with no fatty bits as the outcome.
08:30am - beef & Carrots
Add the minced beef and carrots (diced finely) to the frying pan that the bacon’s just come out of - you can leave the bacon fat in there, we’ll get rid of it later in the cooking process. Heat on high stirring occasionally until the beef fully browns and starts to get nice and crispy (should be around 20-25 minutes). Then turn off the heat and empty the contents of the frying pan into the oven dish with the oxtail-bacon mix. Stir in the beef stock and return to the oven.
Geeky bit: Most recipes cooking minced beef suggest lightly browning the meat, enough to get a bit of flavour, but not so much that you evaporate all the moisture. In this recipe I’m asking you to cook it so much that you sacrifice most of the moisture content i.e. deliberately dry the meat out, so that we can maximise that deep browning flavour (Maillard reaction). The reason for this choice is that once this is done the beef’s going to spend the next 10 hours poaching in a beef stock / red wine mixture, so it’ll have plenty of time to replenish it’s moisture levels before serving.
09:00am - Onions
With the frying pan free again, add the sliced onions, bay leaves, thyme, juniper berries, and a little butter or oil (again don’t worry about the fat, we’re removing it later. Cook on a very low heat stirring occasionally. until the onions have browned (this should be 30-45 minutes). Once cooked, turn the heat up to full and pour in a quarter of the bottle of wine, allow to boil for a couple of minutes then pour the contents into to oven dish with the oxtail-bacon-beef mixture. The garlic should be done by now, squeeze out the garlic from the cloves (it should now have a paste consistency) and stir into the oven dish mixture. Return to the oven.
Geeky bit: The reason for cooking the onions so slowly is that we want to encourage a couple of reactions before the onions burn; pyrolysis (which releases the sugar in the onions) and the Maillard reaction (browning the onions creating a deeper flavour) between the two you’ll end up with a much deeper, sweeter, taste, The reason for adding the red wine is that the surface of the frying pan is now coated in amazing flavours from cooking the oxtail, bacon, beef, and onions over the last couple of hours, the alcohol and water in the wine acts as a solution in lifting those flavours off the pan’s surface so it can be added to the oven dish / make it in to the final meal.
09:30am - The Slow Cook
So most of the cooking is now done, time for the oven to do the hard work. Lower the oven temperature to 110°C (130°C for non-fan ovens). You should have an oven dish full of oxtail, bacon, beef, carrots, onions, garlic, stock, red wine, bay leaves, and juniper berries in there and it should be uncovered.
All you need to now do is give it a stir every 30-60 minutes, top it up with a splash of the remaining red wine (or water when you run out of wine). You want to keep the liquid levels similar to how you would want to eat it at the end i.e. it shouldn’t be submerged as you want it to keep it browning, but there should be a nice level of moisture in there.
At some point the oxtail will start to melt off the bone, when this happens, remove the bones and fatty bits from the oxtail. Also this is when we start to remove the excess fat / oil / butter from the dish. It will rise to the top so each time you take it out to stir just give it a dab with some kitchen paper first, it will absorb the fat. Keep doing this until around 5.00pm, if it starts to look / taste burnt then remove from the oven until later.
Geeky bit: The reason we’re cooking for so long is to maximise the browning, by allowing sections of the meat to brown on the top and then get mixed into the dish. There are also a raft of other beneficial chemical processes (most outlined in the geeky bits above) which will come together to generate an amazing deep
05:00pm - Piping Hot
At about 5.00pm (2 hours pre-serving) peel, chop, and boil the potatoes. Strain and mash them with the butter and 1 tbsp of the mustard.
Stir the gravy powder, balsamic vinegar, and 1 tbsp of mustard into the beef-red wine mixture and transfer to the dish you’re intending to bake the final pie in. I tend to use the same dish as the mixture’s been cooking in all day. If you’re doing the same, pour the mixture into a bowl whilst you wash the pie dish, then pour it back in (it needs to be clean as the final bake is at higher temperature so and bits where the mixtures stuck onto the side will burn during final cooking).
Using a piping bag (or sandwich / freezer bag), pipe the potato onto the top of the pie (or spread on with a knife if you don’t have a piping bag or equivalent). Turn the oven up to 180°C (200°C for non-fan ovens).
Bake the pie for 30-40 minutes until the potato top has gone golden ad crispy.
07:00pm - 12 Hour Cottage pie
Take the pie out and allow to cool for 5 mins. You can top with a few gratings of cheese if you fancy (I tend to leave mine), but a personal preference thing.
I also like to serve at the table, as (especially if you’ve piped the potato) it looks pretty.
And that’s it, hope you enjoy!