Making Beef Stock

I've never done this before and I'm not going to pretend I know what I'm doing. I want to make a kick-ass recipe tomorrow and have decided that making it the best it can be means I need to make my own stock.

Googling it, I came across Simply Recipes's How to Make Stock post and I followed the jist of it.

Beef Stock

adapted from Simply Recipes

click to print

3.7 lbs beef marrow bones

1 lb beef bones from short ribs

1/2 lb beef short rib meat, cubed

Olive oil

2 medium onions, peeled and quartered

2 large carrots, cut into 1-2 inch segments

2 large celery ribs with leaves, cut into 1 inch segments

5 cloves of garlic, unpeeled

Handful of parsley, stems and leaves

2 bay leaves

10-20 peppercorns

Before I get going, let me explain my bones and meat. You saw the marrow bones.

But I'd also purchased two packages of English-style beef chuck short ribs. I cut the bones from the meat and then chopped two of the eight meat hunks up. The bones and chopped beef went into this recipe while the rib meat was saved for something else (jambalaya).

So on with it:

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Place bones, meat, carrots and onions on an 12x17" half sheet or in a large roasting pan. Drizzle two tablespoons of olive oil over them and and toss to coat. Roast in oven until nicely browned, about 45 minutes, turning the bones and meat pieces half-way through the cooking.

Raw goods as they went into the oven, how they looked 22 minutes later before tossing, and then how they looked after 49 total minutes in the oven.

Remove the browned bones, meat and vegetables and place them in a stock pot (mine was 20 qt and probably nearly double the size necessary). While the baking sheet is still hot, pour into it 1/2-1 cup of hot water. Use a spatula to scrape up browned bits stuck to the bottom. Pour the browned bits and water into the stock pot.

Add celery, garlic, parsley, bay leaves, and peppercorns to the stock pot.

Fill the stock pot with cold water, to 1 to 2 inches over the top of the bones. Put the heat on high and bring the pot to a low simmer and then reduce the heat to low.

Inserting my meat thermometer probe into the water after 12 minutes, having dropped the burner to low, let me know that it was at 186.4°F already, quick for my stove-top.

Use a candy or meat thermometer to maintain temperature between 180-200°F. The stock should barely simmer with just a large bubble or two coming up here and there. Cover the pot loosely and continue simmering 3-6 or 8 hours.

Covered for 5 minutes, the temperature of my water rose to 194.0°F. Taking a peek 2 minutes later, when the temperature was at 194.2°F, the stock didn't look much different than it did 7 minutes earlier.

Check on the stock occasionally and use a large metal spoon to scoop away the fat and any scum that rises to the surface. (Transfer the fat and scum to a container to discard.) I skimmed the scum and put it into an empty cat food tin. While I made it a point to skim the fat into the fat separator with a small metal measuring spoon, I saw later it wasn't necessary.

I wound up getting 1/3 cup of fat from the stock.

Instead of doing all of that fat skimming, make yourself an egg, bacon, and cheese sandwich while you continue to wait.

At the end of cooking time (4.5 hours for me as I was chasing daylight for photo purposes, though 6-8 hours is ideal) use tongs or a slotted spoon to gently remove the bones and vegetables from the pot and discard them.

If you look at Elise's directions, she'll tell you taste some of the marrow if you spied some. I thought I saw some, scooped it from a bone, and "tasted" it like an American kid anticipating a pretty Korean rice cake would taste like American birthday cake, as in I took a big mouthful. What I thought was marrow was indeed fat. You can imagine the face I made and the spitting that ensued. I regretted the amount I swallowed for hours after as my stomach was rolling. I need some schooling in what is marrow and what is certainly fat.

Line another large pot (8-quart) with a fine mesh sieve, covered with a couple layers of cheesecloth if you have it. Pour the stock through the sieve to strain it of remaining solids.

My strainer set-up had dampened cheesecloth over a mesh strainer which was inside a colander inside the 8-qt pot. I needed the colander to keep the mesh strainer up out of the pot.

Let cool to room temperature then chill in the refrigerator.

Overnight the fat had risen to the top and solidified. Skim the fat.

And I realized all of that fat skimming done the day before was not at all necessary. If you plan to use all of the stock within a couple of days, the fat layer is a seal against bacteria. Leave that fat layer in place and remove it when you're ready to use the stock. If you plan to freeze the stock you'd skim the fat anyway before transferring into appropriate containers. Either way, it's probably better if you simply remove scum and leave the fat day one.

I chose to reduce my stock over Day 2, pulling 2 cups from it when I was ready to use it, transferring the remainder into the quilted Kerr jars. I wound up with 7 cups left to go into the freezer.

Amazing how light factors into darkness of beef stock.


While it was essentially simple and a fun trial, I'm not sure that it really makes sense for me to do this again. How much beef stock do I really use? And since my freezer is only so big, I realize that I need to be selective about what lives in there. We'll see how these jars of stock end up lasting. I might find that it's really more spacially economical to continue using Better Than Bouillon.

Cost:

• beef marrow bones: $7.42
• beef short rib bones and some meat: $3.69
• onion: $0.50
• carrot: $0.30
• celery: $0.34
• garlic: $0.25
• parsley: $0.99

Total: $13.49. That's 1.50 for each of the 9 cups of stock I got out of this.

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