Beef Croquettes – Shredded Shin Beef in Breadcrumbs

Directions

• Season your Beef well with plenty of salt and pepper, and if you have time leave uncovered in the fridge for an hour.
  In a Dutch Oven or large lidded pot brown your Beef on all sides. Add your red wine and cook off for a couple of minutes then in with the tomatoes, onion, garlic, carrot, Thyme, Bay leaves and beef Stock.
  Optional ingredients, re hydrated Shitake Mushrooms, diced and the dried Chillis, also add in the liquor from the hydrated mushrooms.
  Bring to the boil hen kill the heat
• Add your lidded pot to the oven at around 150c, we want to cook for around 4 hours, but check every hour and give a gentle stir, be careful not to break the meat up in the latter stages of the cook
• At around the 4 hour mark your liquid should be a fairly thick sauce consistency and your beef should easily break apart in your fingers. Gently remove all the beef into a bowl and using two forks, shred the meat as much as you can. then strain your cooking liquor through a sieve
• In a medium pan melt your butter then add the flour and whisk over the heat to cook out the flour (2/3 mins), you will end up with a dough like consistency a bit like “play doh”, this is called a “roux”.
  add in a small amount of your cooking liquor and whisk thoroughly, once smooth add more liquor and whisk again till you get the desired consistency of sauce. The aim here is to have a consistency that is thick enough to be able to roll into balls but thin enough that once cooked will ooze out of the breading.
  Add back in the shredded meat and mix through well.
• Pour the mixture out into a tray and refrigerate for 30 mins, this will make the mixture more workable.
• Whilst the mixture is cooling we can make the sauce/mayo.
  For the sauce, set a blender on medium and place in egg yolk, vinegar, lemon juice and Dijon, blitzing to combine. Slow to a medium speed and add the oil slowly, adjusting with water if it becomes too thick.
  Remove half of the mayo into a large bowl and place remaining ingredients in blender and blitz on high for 2 min. Add mixture to the plain mayo in the large bowl and whisk to combine the two.
  
• Now to bread our croquettes. Using your hands take some of the mixture and roll into balls, roughly pool ball sized dependent on whether you’d like these as a main or a starter.
  Then its a simple breading station set up, dip firstly into plain flour, then egg, then into breadcrumbs, Panko work great for these but any breadcrumbs will work, repeat this for all your croquettes and were on to the cook.
• Deep fry at 170c for around 4 minutes or until golden brown, remove from oil and drain on a wire rack.
• Add sauce to the plate and place the croquettes on top, garnish with any green leaved salad of your choice, sprinkle with maldon salt and enjoy.
  Another serving suggestion if having as a main, garlic mushrooms and buttered green beans work really well.