I'd like to take the opportunity to document another of my recipes. This one's easy, tasty, and very practical.
BEEF STOCK
Good beef stock can be used as a fluid base for gravies, sauces, and stews. Simply replace water with flavourful stock. Or make delicious soup: consommé, beef barley, or use the stock as a base for tomato or other hearty vegetable soups. My recipe isn't much less expensive than buying broth from the store, but the big advantage is that I don't add any salt at all. Store-bought broth can be extremely salty.
STOCK versus BROTH versus CONSOMME
These terms can be used interchangeably, if you don't mind being imprecise.
I make stock, which is the fluid from is boiled bones, savoury vegetables, and spices in water.
Broth is similar, except that you use more meat and less (if any) bone. Boiled bones give up gelatinous collagen, so broth tends to be clearer and lighter than stock. You end up using more spices in a broth, though, so broth can be used immediately for soup, but it won't make a good base for sauces.
Consommé is a clear soup. Boil pre-made stock, add meat, vegetables and spices, and whipped egg whites. The egg acts like a sponge to collect floating particles in the stock. The liquid is strained and comes out as clear as water. A little wine is added to give the consommé a boost.
INGREDIENTS:
Beef bones (enough to fill a frying pan)
Vegetables (use up savoury leftovers. I prefer bell pepper, onion, parsnip, carrot, celery - including the green stalk bits)
1 tb Peppercorns, optional - 1 tsp mustard seed
1 tb oil
Parsley (what you don't put in the soup, use as a garnish - that impresses folks)
Start this recipe early in the morning. You can leave it alone for hours, but don't leave home! You'll need to check on it from time to time as it progresses. Set your oven to "Broil". Place the bones in a large oven-safe pot or pan, and broil them in the oven for up to 1/2 hour. They should cook to a rich brown colour.
While the bones broil, start a large soup pot with water, maybe about half full. Put the pot on high heat on the stove to begin with. Also start a pan on the stove over medium-high heat. Add the oil to the pan. Chop the vegetables into large, coarse pieces and dump them all into the pan. Fry the vegetables until they are fragrant and starting to brown a little.
Once the vegetables have cooked, you can dump them in the pot of hot water. Add the parsley, pepper and optional mustard seed (never spreadable mustard!).
Turn down the heat on the water to very low! Whatever you do, do not allow the water to boil! By thermometer, the water should ideally be 180 degrees F (80 degrees C). If you are doing it by eye, you'll see little tiny bubbles rising from the bottom. Roughly one tiny bubble per second is close to 180 degrees. You may fiddle with the stove dials for a few minutes until the temperature stabilizes where you want it.
Once the bones have broiled, use kitchen pincers to gently place each bone in the pot of water. It's important to disturb the water as little as possible with the bones. The hot water will dislodge collagens and impurities from the bones. The more agitated the water is, the more stuff will come off of the bones. There's differing schools of thought here. Some places I know will put the stock on full boil. You will get stock in 2 - 4 hours that way, but you'll have to keep a careful eye on the water level. As well, your stock will be incredibly murky, and you will have a difficult time removing "soup scum": impurities that tend to rise to the surface along with fat. In the end, you'll have a rather fatty, cloudy, somewhat impure-tasting stock. Toss in some spices and chances are you can get away with it.
Other places will throw out the stock if it ever comes to a boil. Boiling guarantees that whatever impurities are in your ingredients will stay suspended in the broth. Slow heat will allow the impurities to rise to the surface. Periodically, you can "de-scum" the top layer of the stock with a large spoon. Simply scoop off surface-layer gunk. With slow heat, count on simmering for at least 8 - 10 hours. Check frequently to make sure your water does not boil. Keep the dial set to low. If in doubt, it's better to be too low than too high, as the heat will build. The water level should always at least cover the bones. I like at least 1/2 inch coverage.
If you need to, you can add cold water to top up the level. Pour the water very gently down the shaft of a wooden spoon or down a knife blade to avoid agitating the stock. After a while, the stock should look clear and brown like tea.
Before you go to bed for the night, set up your strainer. I use a large collander with a single piece of paper towel in the bottom. The collander sits directly over a large bowl for collecting the stock. Carefully pour the stock into the strainer. The strainer will catch the large pieces, while the paper towel will filter out any extra fat and the small bits. Collect the stock in the bowl. Immediately put the stock in its bowl into the refrigerator. Clean up and go to bed. 
Separate the stock into smaller containers. The stock will keep well in the fridge for a few days, but if you don't plan to use it right away, then freeze it. Stock freezes very well. Just re-heat the amount that you want to use. Sometimes, frozen stock will have a gelatinous look to it when re-heated: gooey bits suspended in the liquid. That's fine, it's just collagen, which breaks up when you cook the stock. It adds flavour to the stock, so don't scoop it out.
VARIATIONS:
Instead of beef bones, you can use a chicken or turkey carcass left over from dinner. If you can get veal bones, that makes the finest stock. Otherwise, the technique and ingredients are mostly the same. You can also make stock out of fish bones, but that's a different recipe, and you cannot slow-cook fish stock. Finally, you can omit the bones altogether and make vegetable stock just using veggies and spices.
Posts
