Oxtail

Oxtail is the culinary name for the tail of cattle. The word once meant only the tail of an ox, but today it can refer to the tails of other cattle as well. A typical oxtail weighs around 3.5 kilograms and is sold skinned and cut into shorter lengths. It is a gelatin-rich meat, usually slow-cooked as a stew or braised, and it is a traditional stock base for oxtail soup. Because the cooking is slow, some modern recipes use a pressure cooker as a shortcut. Oxtail features in Roman coda alla vaccinara, in Jamaican and wider Caribbean stews served with rice, in South African potjie cooking, in Cuban rabo encendido, in Philippine kare-kare and in Korean kkori-gomtang. In the United States it carries the meat-cutting classification NAMP 1791.