Beef Stock

Beef stock is at the heart of many dishes like Bolognese, Cottage Pie, Beef Wellington, Steak And Ale Pie, Beef Stew and many, many others. As I have mentioned before, you just cannot beat making your own stock, follow this simple recipe and I guarantee you will feel a great sense of achievement and pleasure when you see the end result.

Ingredients:


Approx 2KG of beef rib bones          2 sprigs of thyme
Quality water                               2 sprigs of rosemary
2 carrots                                     2 bay leaves
1 large leek                                  20 whole peppercorns
2 sticks of celery                          1 whole bulb of garlic
1 large onion                                1 tbsp of tomato puree

Method:


Preheat your oven to 200C/400F/GM6

Arrange your beef bones in a large, deep roasting tin like this.

Mix the tomato puree with a small amount of water in a small glass.

Then pour it over the beef bones like so.

No need to peel the garlic just chop it straight through the bulb, like this.

Peel your onion and chop into quarters.

Place the garlic and the onions in the roasting tin with the bones. Place the roasting tin in the centre of the oven and cook for 45 minutes at 200C. Take the tin out halfway through the cooking and turn everything over for even browning.

 Once cooked it should look like this and it smells divine. Place this lot into your stock pan and boil a mug full of water to de-glaze the roasting tin.

Pour the boiled water into the tin and use a wooden spoon to scrape all the juices off the bottom like in the picture. Now pour this juice into the stock pan. This is the essence of your stock.

Now chop your carrots, leek, and celery into chunky pieces like in the picture here. Add to these your peppercorns, thyme, rosemary and bay leaves (do not cut or crush these) and put it all into the stock pan with the other ingredients.

Now fill your stock pan as high as you can with water, making sure you cover all the bones and veg like in the picture. Your pan should be at least 3.5L capacity. Now heat the pan on the hob until the stock is very lightly bubbling but NOT boiling. Cook, uncovered like this for 2 hours. skim the stock every 10 minutes for the first hour.

Turn off the heat and your stock should look something like this. It's now time to strain your stock into a smaller pan, ready for concentrating down.

The final stage is to simmer this vigorously for about half an hour. This process will simply evaporate off some of the water, concentrating the flavour. If you would like richer, stronger stock then simmer it longer.

And here it is your finished beef stock - Beautiful. You should have about a litre of top notch concentrated stock so you can now use it or store it! In the picture here I have transferred about 150ml into a container ready for freezing!









I hope you enjoy making this stock as much as I have enjoyed filming and posting it. Trust me when I say this is liquid gold to a cook and it cannot be bought in a shop! Enjoy.




I recommend that you use free range and organic produce for every recipe, diet, juice and detox found within this site. There is no substitute for good quality food!