Oxtail is one of my favorite meats, and I like it best when it has been slow-cooked for hours, so I recommend cooking it the day before and letting it sit overnight. What makes this dish from my cookbook “The Rise” so homey and delicious is the mix of the oxtail and the dumplings, which everyone can relate to as being an example of comfort food at its finest.
This traditional Caribbean dish — mostly from Guyana — is made by stewing meat in a dark, rich gravy flavored with cinnamon, brown sugar, hot chiles, and cassareep, a special brown sauce made from cassava root. African Americans adapted the recipe using oxtail instead of offal, which are the internal organs of butchered animals. Regardless, this is a dish that only gets better with time in the pot.
