Homemade Beef Stock – a natural flavour and nutritional enhancer to every meal!
If you need a rich flavour stock, this is the one. Find the best beef marrow bones you can and enjoy making this robust beef stock that will empower so many dishes like French onion soup, Beef goulash, Beef & Ale pies, Dutch Beef Bitterballen, Gravies, etc
Store-bought stock cubes
Most store-bought stock cubes contain wheat flour, but food manufacturers are starting to take notice of gluten-free options and are adding friendly flours like cornflour or potato flour to their cubes. Just double-check the packaging before adding it to your shopping basket.
Can you eat the cooked bone marrow?
The cooked bone marrow seasoned with some salt is delicious on toast or as beef marrow dumplings in soups In fact the late Anthony Bourdain often said “If God made butter, it would taste exactly like bone marrow!”
Is beef stock healthy?
The stock may appear gelatinous. This is a good sign that the collagen in the bones & cartilages have slowly been extracted into the stock and formed gelatine, not to mention many beneficial minerals and nutrients. This is the superfood component in healthy bone broths.
Read my blog on Why Stock Taking is a Must in a domestic kitchen, especially for gluten-free diets. This blog will give you detailed information about all the advantages to making homemade stock, including beef stock.
If you haven’t got much room in your freezer for containers of liquid stock, then try making a concentrated reduction into stock cubes. Boil down the strained stock to a thick gel, taking care not to let it stick to the bottom and pour them into ice-cube containers to solidify. These can be stored in the fridge for a few weeks or in the freezer for at least 6 months.
Homemade Beef Stock
Equipment
- Large roasting tray
- Large, deep stockpot, or
- Slow Cooker/Crockpot, or
- Instant Pot
Ingredients
- 1 kg raw beef marrow bones, organic or grass-fed if possible
- 2 onions, cut in half halved with skins left on
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 8 litres room temperature water
- 3 carrots, roughly chopped
- 3 celery sticks & leaves, roughly chopped
- 1 parsnip (optional), roughly chopped
- ½ bunch fresh parsley leaves and stems
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme
- 2 dried bay leaves
- 10 black peppercorns
- 5 whole cloves
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar
- salt, to taste (only add at the end of cooking)
Instructions
Roasting the bones & onions
- Preheated the oven at 180°C/350°F.
- Lightly grease a roasting tray with some olive oil.
- Place the beef marrow bones and onions on the roasting tray. Drizzle with some olive oil.
- Roast the bones for approximately 30 minutes. You want to see the bones looking nicely brown and the onions crisp, but not burnt.
Slow Cooking the Beef Stock
- While the bones are roasting, fill the deep stockpot, a crockpot or an Instant Pot two thirds full with room temperature tap water and bring to the boil.
- Lower the temperature to a simmer and add the vegetables, herbs, peppercorns, cloves and vinegar to the pot
- Add the bones and onions with the skin. Tip the fat from the roasting tray into a small bowl and keep chilled or freeze it for another recipe like Yorkshire puddings.
- Skim off any scum that rises to the top of the stockpot. If your beef bones are organic, there will be less scum to remove.
- Cover the pot and simmer for at least 24 hours. The stock will take on a rich, brown colour. The longer you cook the stock, the darker and richer it will appear. You may need to top it up with some more water to keep it from reducing too much.
Storage
- When you are satisfied with the colour and flavour (add salt only now!), remove the bones and vegetables, and allow to cool before straining the soup through a fine-mesh sieve into a large container.
- Once it has cooled down completely, cover and chill until needed.
- After a few hours, a layer of fat should settle on the surface of the soup. This will be easy to remove when the stock is cold. Remove it with a spoon and discard.
- Return to several portion size containers to either chill or freeze.
Notes
- Keeps for one week chilled
- Suitable to freeze for 6 months
you may also like
French Onion Soup
VIENNESE GOULASH with Gluten-Free Dumplings (Serviettenknödel)
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