Is Making your own stock worth the trouble?

[Don Cuevas]

I'm again making homemade beef stock. I bought 4.55 kilos of very meaty bones, including short ribs.
After washing and patting the meat dry, I cut it into manageable pieces.
I peeled and cut 4 large carrots, 2 large stalks of celery, 3 or so onions, 6-8 cloves of garlic, olive oil, rosemary, a little orégano, thyme (parsley had a cold. ;D ), black pepper and some coarse salt, and mixed it all together.

This was put into two roasting pans and roasted at 400º F for 1 1/2 hours. It had a nice, caramelized color. This will be a good, brown beef stock.

Then all was placed into a huge tamalera/stockpot and added a little over 6 liters of cold water.

This was brought to a boil (almost 30 minutes, the heat reduced to the lowest possible simmer, and partially covered.

It's now in its third hour, and looking good. But I want to go to sleep and it probably needs about 2-3 more hours at the very least.

At that point, the meat and vegetables will be lifted out of the pot using a handled Chinese strainer. The stock is then strained through a fine metal strainer lined with cheesecloth. Then it needs to cool. The meat will need to be deboned. The stock must be refrigerated once it reaches room temperature.

I am wondering how I can fit this into my sleep/wake schedule.

I could turn it off right now, lid it, and leave it until my normal (?) waking time of about 2-3 a.m. Then I could start it up again. Can't hurt it, now, could it? I know that it won't have cooled much in those intervening hours.

Yeah. That's what I'll do. I just don't trust my brain and limbs to coordinate well if I attempt to work this in heavy brain fog.

Thanks for listening. It's been a great help.

I'll let you know how it turns out. I know that it's worth the hassle.

[Deleted]

I would love to be able to do that -- but I have no way to store all of the extra stock, so I can't.

[Don Cuevas]

I got another 4 hours of pretty good sleep, and all is going well. I remembered belatedly to chop up and add some parsley. Now I'm waiting for the whole mass to come to a boil again. Then I'll turn down the heat and let it barely simmer another two hours.

This stock has a really nice brown color, something I didn't get on my earliest attempts.

[Deleted]

No bay leaves in the mix?

[lagatta]

I do make stock, but on a much smaller scale than Don Cuevas, in my old crockpot. Usually poultry though sometimes beef if the Cono Sur butchers round the corner have some beef bones. The Sino-Vietnamese grocery often has duck necks - those make wonderful, rich stock with a lot of body, and there is enough meat on duck necks to be worth stripping it off. This time I just made a rice with it and vegetables, but I've made rillettes with them when I had enough, and some duck fat.

Don, the beef isn't too overcooked to be worth eating? Kerouac, I like bay leaves in stock too.

The crockpot doesn't really produce too much stock to store in my little fridge, but remember, Kerouac, you can boil it down to a fond. If I have too much to store, I always boil it down.

[Don Cuevas]

Feb 17, 2013 7:46:31 GMT kerouac2 said:

No bay leaves in the mix?

I forgot to mention bay leaves; but yes.

There was meat worth stripping off and using as a soup ingredient.
I ended with 6 liters of very good brown beef stock, now cooling on the counter.

[Deleted]

I add a dry red wine to my homemade beef stock. It truly does highlight and bring out more flavors.

[lagatta]

Indeed. Dark beer is good too.

[Don Cuevas]

As I make my beef stock in considerable quantity, to freeze for multiple applications, I prefer to keep it relatively simple and pure. I can add dry red wine to the end product, eg, tomorrow's braised boneless short ribs in red wine.

I would put dark beer in the final product if, for example, I were making Carbonnades a la Flamande. But after my last Carbonnades, I greatly prefer the red wine braise. There's something intrinsically indulgent in using an entire bottle of decent red wine in a dish.

Do you put salt in your stock, and if so, at what stage? This time I put it in when I put the oven browned meat and bones to simmer. I believe that it extracts more flavor that way.

[Deleted]

I personally have finally learned (after being browbeaten by the specialists for the last several years) that you should not salt anything in advance. So I have pretty much eliminated salt from all preparations. Theoretically, one should only salt things when they are in front of you in your plate, if needed.

And yet, I am not completely convinced. After all, when one is receiving guests, one would like to put things in front of them that are perfectly seasoned already rather than hearing them say "This isn't salty enough. Where's the shaker?"

Nevertheless, I think I will continue to almost not salt things. At least I know that it is better for everybody's health.