Recipe of the Week
Basic brown stock
Courtesy of
Richard Blunt
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Ingredients
5 lbs. raw beef bones (it helps if some of them are meaty)
5 qts. cold water
2 large carrots, chopped
3 ribs of celery, chopped (if you decide to use the leaves, avoid the green ones, because they turn bitter with long cooking, but the yellow leaves in the middle are fine)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup fresh tomato, chopped
1 small white turnip, chopped
6 whole black pepper corns
4 sprigs fresh parsley
1 clove unpeeled fresh garlic
1 tsp. dried leaf thyme
1 bay leaf
6 whole cloves
Method
Preheat oven to 450°.
Mix chopped onion, carrots, and celery and place beef bones along with 1 cup of this chopped vegetable mixture in a roasting pan. Arrange bones and vegetables into a single layer. Place in upper part of oven to brown. Turn bones and vegetables a few times to ensure even browning. Browning should take 30-40 minutes.
Transfer browned bones and vegetables to stock pot and discard all the extracted fat.
Add the water, along with remaining chopped vegetable mixture and other ingredients, to the stock pot. Transfer about 3 cups of the water to roasting pan, after you have discarded the fat, and bring this to a slow simmer on top of stove. While this is simmering, scrape bottom of roasting pan with a wooden spoon until all brown glaze on bottom has dissolved into water and transfer this liquid to the stock pot.
Bring stock to a boil over high heat then immediately reduce to a slow simmer. Remember to remove the grey mass as it appears.
Place a lid on the stock pot so that it covers about 3/4 of the pot. Continue the slow simmer for about 4-5 hours.
Remove stock pot from heat and taste stock. If it isn’t flavorful enough, return to a simmer and reduce some more. When it tastes good, strain and cool it.
