I guess you can tell that
I like to make stock. Since I've already gone into it, I suppose I don't need to go into more detail about stock lore and the wonders of boiled bones. I was recently in the mood for a nice beefy soup, so when I saw beautiful, thick beef knuckles on sale for .79c a pound, I had to give in.
I've been appalled lately at the sight of soup bones on sale for upwards of $5 a pound. Nope, not organic beef bones. Not veal bones or buffalo. I'm talking about plain beef knuckles and oxtails. Folks - don't throw your money away. What you're being sold is practically offal. You could buy yourself some nice steak for the price of these bones, so don't be fooled by supermarkets trying to make a buck. Go to places that have actual butchers on site, and you'll find bones at a better cost. I never pay more than $2-3 a pound for soup bones - and that is only if they're especially fresh and meaty.
As I've said before - beef knuckles are some of my favorite soup bones. Cows are big, heavy animals - and their knees require plenty of cartilage to support their weight. This cartilage is gold when it comes to stock. As you'll see, with plenty of slow simmering, that cartilage will give way to wonderful, super gelatinous stock. I also enjoy using oxtails. Oxtails are exactly what the sound like - beef tails. The small vertebrae in this cut of meat is full of marrow, and the more delicate nature of those bones makes them more easily broken down and dissolved into their mineral constituents. They also have plenty of cartilage, and the meat tends to be less fatty than the knuckles.
Leftover bones can also be used, but I personally don't have much experience with this. Most beef made in my home is boneless, and I think if I tried to store away more bones in my family's freezer, my mother would store MY bones in the freezer (hopefully next to the ice cream..). I digress.
What You'll Need
5-8 pounds of beef soup bones
1 large onion, sliced
1 carrot
2 leek tops
celery stalk
1 garlic clove
1 shot glass of sherry, wine, or liquor
The How-To
Preheat oven to 375-400F
Place the bones on a lightly greased baking pan. In order to make the stock brown and rich, the bones need to be roasted. Arrange the bones and meat in a single layer for even browning. Sprinkle with sea salt. Even if you don't plan to salt your stock later, add a little salt now. I wish I knew why, but the salt seems to make the bones and meat brown better and makes the stock taste less bland. I find no difference in the saltiness of the finished product, if no more salt is added later - I've just noticed that the salted bones stock has a deeper taste.
Arrange the sliced onions over the meat and bones. While I was still learning the ropes of making beef stock, I learned quickly that roasted onions taste MUCH better in the finished product. They also lend flavor to the meat.
Don't trim the meat! Roasting will melt off a good deal of the fat. You don't want to risk losing precious connective tissue - like the tendon I'm holding here - which adds so much texture to the stock.
Pop the pan in the oven, and allow the meat to brown on one side for about 25 minutes.
After about 25 minutes, flip the bones and meat over. Note that some parts of the bones are still bloody - this is OK! The bloody parts will continue to cook even when flipped over.
This is what the bones should look like when finished: dark tan with dark brown parts, with dark brown juicy meat.
The onions, which will go into the stockpot with the meat and bones, should be soft and just a little brown on the edges.
After draining the fat into a gravy separator, use a shotglass full of liquor, wine, or sherry to deglaze the drippings from the pan.
What I like to do is to add the liquor, pop the pan back into the oven for two or three minutes to heat it up, and then to use a brush to scrape up all of the parts stuck to the pan. These drippings are really, really flavorful and its awful to let it go down the drain with the dishsoap when it could be in the stock pot!
The bones I got were not very fatty at all. This creamer contains all of the fat from the entire pan. Someone should really make a miniature shotglass-sized gravy separator! After letting the layers settle, I drained the fat very slowly and put the dark brown drippings on the bottom into the stock pot.
As seen in my
Roasted Chicken Stock tutorial, I save the tough, barely-edible green stems from my leeks to use in stock. Leeks are huge, and only a third at most of them is tender and tasty to eat as a side dish - put the rest to good use!
Ugh, celery. I dislike celery in chicken stock because I feel that it easily overpowers the chicken flavor, but I must admit that it's necessary in beef stock. I usually only use a single stock; in this case, I used a half-eaten core of celery from the bottom of the fridge. It was old, no longer perfectly crisp and good for eating alone - but the flavor was fine for stock.
Like with the celery, I use past-prime carrots in stock. This carrot was long forgotton in the crisper, was especially bendy with cracked skin..but its still a carrot, and its still useful for stock. I slice them vertically and throw them in.
Cover the meat with a few inches of water; its all right if the veggies poke out, especially if you're lazy like me and do not chop your veggies when making stock. Set the stove on medium-low, start to simmer, and leave it alone. Skim scum as needed.
Unfortunately..this is the only progress picture I have. I let this stock simmer for 36 hours -a habit I'll have to keep, since this stock turned out wonderfully. I didn't mean to do this, but I happened to be right in the middle of the school week from Hell, peppered with all-nighters, science papers, and crying over chemical calculations gone wrong. I admit it: I forgot about my stock, and its probably the best thing I've ever unintentionally done in the kitchen.
At the end of Hell Week, I put the pot (bones, veggies, fat and all) into the fridge before falling asleep for 15 hours. I woke up to this: completely solid, gelatinous, deep brown stock. Not too much fat. Plenty of flavor.
If you let the stock gel in the fridge, heat it slightly to make it liquid again. Remove the largest bones first...
...and pour the rest through a corander into a new pot.
The rough product will probably look like this - dark brown, a little cloudy, with tiny globules of fat and cooked cartilage floating.
The vegetable matter strained out of the stock is compostible if you give it a quick rinse to get rid of any excess beefy-ness that may attract pests.
Run the stock through a large-mesh strainer. The mush you'll catch will mostly contain vegetable mush with a little meat and grit (from the cooked, softened bones). This is why you should never give your pet cooked bones - just taste the mush. It'll taste sandy from all of the grit that your pet could choke on.
Follow with a run through a finer strainer. This strainer will catch finer grit and bits of fat. Allow the stock to cool at room temperature.
The bones, after being well-simmered for stock, will feel almost spongy. The cartilage - once firm and rubbery - should mush and mold under a fingernail with the consistency of silly putty.
I like to separate the meat from the bones, cooked connective tissue (now quite soft and edible), and cartilage. Its soft, tender meat - well put to use in a beef barley soup or in a pot pie.
After cooling the stock, use the fine strainer to scoop out the layer of fat that will form on top of the stock. Beef stock tends to be much fattier than chicken stock; take care to remove as much as possible.
Store in the fridge for up to five days, or place in airtight freezer containers and store in the freezer.
Enjoy!
