So far there is only one place I have found in Northwest Arkansas where you can get beef cheeks - WalMart supercenter in Rogers. You can get them from Richard's if you order them - but you have to purchase a 60 pound box of them.
At $2.25/lb at WalMart this is a steal. But, when purchasing for a recipe, you want to get at least 2 packages because you will be cutting off a lot of fat and since the cooking time is long and they do better as leftovers anyway, might as well get a couple of meals out of them.
Lesson #1 - learned the hard way. You must cut off the fat before cooking them. I was running low on time and just browned them without cutting the fat off and threw them in the pan with the wine. Big mistake - not only does the fat stay shall we say gelatinous, it also permeates the sauce. So we had a lot of fat with our meat and a fatty sauce.
Lesson #2 - it really does take 3-4 hours of braising before it becomes truly fall off your fork tender. Even if you raise the temperature of the oven, doesn't speed it up.
We have tried several recipes for the beef cheeks and so far the best one is on Epicurious.com. The best part of the recipe is the reducing of the wine which intensifies the flavor and makes it really good.
Now - trying to find a recipe for Beef Cheeks to make burritos!
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