Greedy Girl : Smoked and Curried Oxtails

"Beefy"

Oxtails are a tried and true recipe beloved by all Jamaicans. It my brother’s favorite dinner meal. Over the years my methods of cooking oxtails have greatly evolved. I’ve eliminated soy sauce or browning and started naturally braised and browning the oxtail to get the best color and develop richer flavors. I choose not to mask the flavors by using water to stew it rather than wine or a broth. It always turns out delicious. But at the end of the day sometimes a great recipe can always stand to be a greater recipe. With that goal in mind over the last year I have experimenting with new ways to make oxtail even more flavorful than it already is. I’ve made fried oxtail in a sweet sticky glaze, I’ve smoked it and I’ve curried it.

I first started currying it because I didn’t see why we can curry chicken, goat and fish and no one really curries oxtail. We see beef curries all the time but never the tail. After the first time I made it, we were hooked. To me curried oxtail taste one-thousand-times better than the traditional stewed oxtail, it’s like the curry transforms the already flavorful tails. One day I was making stewed peas and smoked the pigtails and oxtails before adding them to the stew. That’s when I decided the net time I made an oxtail stew I would smoke the tails first. And that’s what I did, believe it or not, the smoked oxtail became the new favorite even more loved then the curried.

So for this recipe first off I had time. Cause now we are going to smoke and curry the oxtails. I already knew they were going to be delicious because I have smoked and curried conch. They were the most flavorful pot of tails in life. Tender, flavorful, you get the Smokey flavor with a curry finish. They only got better the longer they sat in the refrigerator. Left overs didn’t last longer than three days. You can pretty much adapt this recipe to fit goat, and chicken.