AS it happens, Cooking Light magazine has just introduced an online 'Cooking Class' each month that will feature basics on various techniques, with video instruction, and they are starting with braising. Their recipes are always good. Have a look.

Yesterday I braised a steak in a can of diced tomatoes for chili. After it was tender, I shredded it with two forks and put it back in the pot with a diced onion, a tablespoon of garlic, a can of kidney beans and the juice, powdered chili (not chili powder), a teaspoon of cumin, and a teaspoon of italian seasoning. Let it simmer until the beans start to break down.

Mmmm You can braise a pork butt in onions and garlic and oil and adobo chili paste. Then you boil it in broth with a bay leaf, and voila! carnitas!

For best results, after boiling take the meat off the bone and fry it again in lard.

If your pork butt has no bone it won't work right.

You can add cumin, oregano, and ground coriander to the initial frying process for more flavor. I like it pretty well without them, though.

If you want a cheap, tasty soup that will keep you full for hours, make pozole and add the carnitas to it.

Tastes best if simmered all day.

Pulled pork!

A shoulder of pork (blade, bone in). A can of cola (not diet, you need the sugar), a small jar of barbecue sauce.

Pork and cola into Dutch oven. Cook on slow for several hours. Take pork out. The blade bone should come out easily. If it doesn't, it needs more cooking. Shred the pork. Put it back in the Dutch oven/slow cooker. Add the jar of sauce. Stir. Cook another hour. Serve with the bread of your choice.

We come to bury Caesar, not to braise him...

(Damned with faint braise)

Beef Roast
1 whole roast
1 quart of stock
3-4 carrots, cut up
2-3 peeled potatoes, cut up
2-3 stalks of celery, cut up
3 garlic cloves
1 28 oz can whole tomatoes in juice
a bouquet garni (or other fresh herbs)
6-8 black peppercorns
flour and salt, a little oil
1 ounce vodka, whatsthisheresauce, hot sauce and a dab of horseradish.

0. Oven to 250-ish
1. Salt the meat and dust with flour
2. Brown in oil the heated dutch oven
3. Add stock to come halfway up the roast
4. Add the carrots, potatoes, celery, garlic, and tomatoes (reserving the juice)
5. Cover and put into over for 4+ hours

Extras - using the reserved juice, a left over celery rib the vodka, wostishustshyster sauce, hot sauce, and horseradish make a bloody mary and savor it.

In the last hour of roast time, make a roux (3T flour, 3T butter cooked on low heat until it's a nice ochre color). When the roast comes out, use the roux plus a few ladles of stock from the pan to make gravy.

Serve the thoroughly cooked vegetables with slices of meat and gravy.

OR serve the meat with a nice green salad and use the stock to make soup (add a few handfuls of cooked egg noodles with the cooked cut up veggies and coarse chunks of leftover beef).

No matter what, reserve the some stock and store the leftover beef in it so it won't dry out.

only thing, I think pup is veg. Is that right?

Cooking Light has a recipe for braised sweet potatoes. Fennel braises really well too.