Beef Bones......... Soup of course!
#9
  Re: (...)
Can bones feed the world? I think so, raising you own beef, and custom butchering give you a great insight into the amount of waste a packer or grocery store is forced to deal with when placing beef in the retail cases. Since I pay to grow the thing, I like to see as much as possible used. As with my blog on Oxtail Soup there are many many protein laden bones on the bovine (and other stock animals) that can lend themselves well to a nice dinner or lunch. So lets explore the versatile and flavorful beef bone!

Basically any trimmed bone with beef left on it will do. At the grocery stores they are cut to spec and therefore still run about $3 (USD) per pound. But if you know a butcher or look up where the butcher shop is in your area, stop by and talk to them. You can usually get them for less the $1 per
pound. Here I have some shanks split.

[Image: beefbones.jpg]

I will salt these and hit them with some fresh cracked black pepper, a little thyme and rosemary on them as well. While they are resting in the rub I will get to preparing the vegetables for the soup stock and the vegetables for
the beef rendering. Making a great soup takes several processes. While most just boil down the bones and create a soup, old Jack Wilson taught me that your soup stock is always made separately from your base stock. That is you are always going to make two stocks to create excellent soup. It will become more clear as we progress.

First the vegetables for the soup base. We begin with the standard mirepoix and start by sweating them out well.

[Image: veggies.jpg]

Now this mirepoix is going to make the soup base for what will be the underlying stock for a vegetable soup. Almost all soups should start with this classic beginning. Once you have the vegetables tender and the white wine reduced out of the sauté pan it is time for them to hit the stock pot.

[Image: soupstart.jpg]

Now basically we have a neutral vegetable mix at this time. Flavorful? Yes. Finished, by no means! Now it is time to add the specials that build depth and add unique character to the soup base. In the picture above you can see some Turkish bay leaf has been added. To that we are also going to add in a little ginger, zest of a lemon, zest of half an orange, one minced shallot, and a little fennel seed.

[Image: specialingred.jpg]

I don't add these to the sweat because I don't want the aromatics lost to the air. I want these oils to bind to the fat I used to render the mirepoix. Which in this case was olive oil. Add in more white wine and then reduce by 75 percent. Whip out the stick blender and have at it. This is
your soup base. No soup should be made without it.

[Image: stckblnd.jpg]

All my soups are made by compounding. It gives such a unique depth to the soup that I don't feel it can be skipped. Now that the soup base if finished we can concentrate on the beef bones and begin to pull together the flavors that will become out vegetable beef soup. First you must start with a mirepoix in another sauté pan. You are going to do a lot higher heat on this sweat because we are also going to sear the beef bones. And we are not going to complete the sweat to finish. This is because we have
an additional rendering step that will change the type of sugar complexity we are creating. I have added into the mirepoix some potatoes. And a little garlic. The underlying spice is rosemary and thyme. I am using shiraz as the wine for the stock. Which beef loves and beef soups absolutely love!

[Image: brwnmerlot.jpg]

Now once these beef bones are browned on all sides, we must move them to secondary rendering. And that is done in the oven. The Maillard reaction actually starts a room temperature, but is most active around 140 to 160 F. The complex chemistry going on has yet to be modeled by scientists. But oh my the human palate can analyze it well!!! And so it is into the oven for roasting!

[Image: roasting.jpg]

It is a pizza stone, I use it as a heat collector. It allows my roast dish to pull heat fast so I get the bottom of the dish up to temp almost as fast as the hot air starts to work the top of the pan. Just one of those things I did being lazy and found out it is worth doing in most instances. The stone is a reservoir of heat, it gives that heat up to my heavy bottom pan rapidly so it comes to temperature fast. Once they are done roasting, I remove
to begin to assemble the extraction for the beef soup.

[Image: finishedrsting.jpg]

These nice roasted bones will be placed in a second stock pot to finish the soup process on the beef side. But the pan has hidden flavors stuck to the bottom from the searing and roast process. So we deglaze the pan with a little more shiraz after removing the beef and vegetables to the larger stock pot.

[Image: deglaze.jpg]

Once that is complete I add everything to the beef stock pot. This will simmer until the meat falls off the bones. The time it takes to do so at a simmer is almost 6 hours, but it is worth the wait and it sure makes the house
smell great while you are working on the bread for the dinner.

[Image: stckpot.jpg]

After a few hours this pot has rendered all the flavor it can. It looks like this at the end, I will pull the bones, remove the beef and chop it, Then a short Dépouiller to clarify the beef stock. Finally combine the Dépouiller
beef stock with the soup base made earlier, add in the beef and the vegetables, simmer til veggies are getting tender, then add a nice gemelli pasta.

[Image: stckfinh.jpg]

In the end it all comes together to produce a nice meal made primarily from what others consider scraps, throw away. Combine this with some homemade Pain au Levain and you have a really have a great meal. I drink shiraz
with this, but most red wines will work for the dish.

[Image: finshed.jpg]

On thing you will notice is the carrots are not coined in my soup. I don't care for the way a coined carrot turns to mush, especially on a second time reheat. Since I grow my own carrots I prefer to peel them and cut them into lengths. They are fork tender, but they don't turn to mush.

'til we talk again, take those bones and make a soup, the weather in North American is perfect for soup now! It is oh so good and very inexpensive!


Chef Bob Ballantyne
The Cowboy and The Rose Catering
Grand Junction, Colorado, USA
Chef de Cuisine
The Cowboy and The Rose Catering

USMC Sgt 1979-1985
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#10
  Re: Beef Bones......... Soup of course! by bbally (Can bones feed the w...)
Thanks for that. I'll check out beef bones tomorrow at the stoe. It's turned cold here. and it's soup time.
Practice safe lunch. Use a condiment.
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#11
  Re: Re: Beef Bones......... Soup of course! by Lorraine (Thanks for that. I'...)
I always like just turning around three times, lying down, and gnawing on them.






Well, one must live up to one's nickname and avatar. LOL!
If blueberry muffins have blueberries in them, what do vegan muffins have?
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#12
  Re: Beef Bones......... Soup of course! by bbally (Can bones feed the w...)
Another beautiful symphony by Bob.

Thanks for sharing!
AJ
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#13
  Re: Re: Beef Bones......... Soup of course! by LuvFud (Another beautiful sy...)
Bob I just love your posts

They inspire as well as make me hungry!
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#14
  Re: Re: Beef Bones......... Soup of course! by labradors (I always like just t...)
Quote:

I always like just turning around three times, lying down, and gnawing on them.









Leave it to you, Labradors!!!

THAT is the ONLY way to make soup, Bob!

I remember both grandmothers cooking, and they tossed NOTHING in the trash! They found a use for EVERYTHING that was left over from ANYTHING! It always amazed me! Sometimes my maternal grandmother would even wash in hot soapy water, the "tin foil" (not "aluminum", it was "tin" then!) I used to think, geez, Nonna, it's "only" foil! But that is how THEY were raised!

When we were young, there was a butcher at the end of our street (which was about 2 miles!), and "mother" used to send us up there to his teenie shop for a "bag" of bones! We would come home with a BAG! She would make a multitude of soups from those things and many, many times there was quite a bit of meat left on the bones and she would prepare this dish with the meat... It amazed me what she and my grandmother could do with those bones! We never complained about going for the bones because he also had the "penny candy" and mom always gave us a nickle. We would return with "bags" of candy that the 5 cents got us!!! (Can't do that today, or anything even close!!!)
Vive Bene! Spesso L'Amore! Di Risata Molto!

Buon Appetito!

Linda
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#15
  Re: Re: Beef Bones......... Soup of course! by MUSICMAKER ([blockquote]Quote:[h...)
I hear you one the prices. I remember Fry's penny candy store. Find one of the quart returnable bottles on the side of the road and eat candy like a king for several days with the 15 cents it was worth!
Chef de Cuisine
The Cowboy and The Rose Catering

USMC Sgt 1979-1985
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#16
  Re: Re: Beef Bones......... Soup of course! by bbally (I hear you one the p...)
Oh yeah!!!! Forgot about those! Even if the bottle was broken, if we brought in the "neck" part or the opening, Bruce (that was the butcher) would still give us the money! But only for those pieces! Don't know why or what the significance of that was, but didn't care at the time.....our eyes were on that CANDY!!!!!
Vive Bene! Spesso L'Amore! Di Risata Molto!

Buon Appetito!

Linda
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