Adding meat to beef stock

[hungrystudent]

So I've found a source for beef bones, and I've got about 7lbs of knuckle and femur waiting to go in the pot.  I know I should add ~ 1 pound mirepoix, and that if I'm aiming for a brown stock (which I am) I should roast everything and add in a couple oz. of browned tomato paste.  All of that info I got from "The Professional Chef".  Here's the info I'd love from the experts on the board: In order to build beefy flavor into the stock, should I consider adding a bit of meat, as I do with chicken stock?  Also, I've read in several places that some red wine can be beneficial - is this true, and how much is "some"?  Thanks in advance, everybody!

 

[teamfat]

I'd leave out the red wine, unless you know what you are going to do with the finished stock.  The wine may or may not be a tasteful addition, depending on how you use it.  For example, if it goes into an onion soup the tannins in the wine will counteract the sweetness of the onions.  I also add no salt, or maybe just a pinch to stocks as the salt level can be adjusted in the final product.  Reducing a salty stock for a sauce or whatever can really make the final dish too salty.

I will recommend you brush the bones with a bit of tomato paste and roast them for maybe half an hour in a hot oven, say 425F.  Cover them with cold water, bring up to almost a simmer and steep for an hour or so, skimming on occasion, before adding your aromatics.  And yes, a few nice chunks of say, chuck roast will add more flavor to the finished product.

mjb.

 

[chefedb]

As stated above do not add wine.Make sure bones are cracked exposing marrow.

The addition of the meat is optional and your call. I agree with brushing bones with tomato puree or paste. By the time finished you should have 2 1/2  3qts good stock. Strain thru cheesecloth.Cool oernight in 2 pots in fridge .Next day take off all fat that will form on top.Then freeze, date and label in containers.

 

[french fries]

Agreed with every single thing teamfat and Ed said.

I wanted to add that I like meaty Beef shanks in my Veal/Beef stock, adds meat flavor.

 

[hungrystudent]

Alright everyone, I'm letting the bone warm a little bit before roasting right now.  Thanks for your advice (especially about the wine), and wish me luck!

 

[hungrystudent]

So.  I need some reassurance.  After almost 10 hours of labor and about $12 in ingredients, I find myself with the result: 1 1/2 qts of beef stock.  The stock seems like it'll be good stuff, but I won't know for sure until I cook something with it (I think I'm going to aim at making some French onion soup this weekend).

Regardless of how the stock turns out, this seems like a horrible rate of return.  I usually get between 3 and 4 quarts out of a batch of chicken stock (using two whole chickens, minus the breasts), plus a couple pounds of poached chicken.  I love my homemade stock - it just tastes better than the boxes - but I just don't see how homemade beef stock can be a sustainable proposition - especially as I would like to begin experimenting with the Espagnole sauce family. 

I guess my question is, how many of you make your own beef stock?  How many of you buy frozen stock at a gourmet foods store and then use that to make your soups and sauces?  And my other question is, did I really screw up?  I'm not sure how I would've been able to crank out more volume without really diluting the final product (at least, in that pot - maybe if I had a giant pot I could start with 2 gallons of water and just let it reduce down to one?).

Anyways, thanks again for everyone's help.  And on the plus side, sitting around watching the stock all day gave me plenty of time to plan and prep dinner (fajitas, beans, and rice).

 

[chefedb]

Commercially  there are many good beef bases and stocks available.On a retail basis there are none. unless you are using byproducts of your kitchen, like chicken carcasses or bones from your own butchering; it does not pay to make your own,because then you have to go out and buy the ingredients only to make the stock. Do the math, you produced 48 ounces for $12.00 or 25 cents per ounce., thats without the labor or energy cost. This is to expensive.Do not use boullion cubes or powder(to salty), use already boxed stocks in liquid form

 

[hungrystudent]

Thanks, Ed.  I appreciate you confirming that $.25 an ounce is far too much for a home cook to be using on stock (and I'm sure this applies doubly in a commercial situation).  I skimmed the cooled fat this morning, and I must say that this stock has set up to a gel consistency FAR thicker than my chicken stock ever has.  I'm not sure if this is because my chicken stock is really more of a broth (plenty of meat and a good amount of mirepoix plus some herbs at the end) or because of the simmer time (about 9 hours for the beef and between 2 and 3 for the chicken).  In any case, I'm very happy with the quality of this stock, but I just can't afford to do it on a regular basis. 

I did save and freeze the bones, so I may try again.  This time I'll use a remouillage to start the stock, and I'll wait until I have a bigger pot.  If I could get 1 gal. out of $12 of bones, I'd be pretty happy.  Plus, if I continue to move the simmered bones forward to make a remouillage for the next batch, I'll feel like I'm getting a little more out of my money. 

Though this particular venture didn't go as well as I would have liked, I sure had a fun time making the stock, and I feel like I've learnt a lot.  Thanks again for all the help and support. 

And now for one final question: I've found canned stocks to have a really funny taste, something like the taste of canned tuna.  I'm not sure if this taste is from the process or from the can itself, but either way canned stocks are out.  I've used boxed stocks as Ed suggested, and I feel like they work pretty well for soups, but I'm considered about the amount of salt.  The stock I've used (Swanson) was so salty that I think it would quickly become inedible if I were to reduce it down enough for many of the French preparations.  Is there another brand that's a better choice, or should I perhaps try the "Low Sodium" variations?

Thank you all once more!

 

[chefedb]

I find Butterball brand chicken broth  taste more like chicken then the rest. Louis Minor makes a low salt chick base thats very good. It is a paste. A lot of them tast like a carrot or vegetable base. Like they dipped the chicken in for a minute.

You don't have to cook already prepared stocks that much, unless you want to make Glace D Viand or a Demi of some sought. Also after cooking those beef bones for 9 hours, there is not much left to extract.

 

[hungrystudent]

Thanks for the recommendation on the Butterball brand.  A couple of the smaller local specialty stores sell their own "homemade" stock, and I think I'll try those as well.  I ask because I am, in fact, looking to experiment with Demi-Glace and/or Glace De Viande, as it seems like a technique I ought to have at least tried, and also a technique with results that freeze well and can be made available relatively quickly.  Incidentally, could I make the Glace or the Espagnole sauce and then the Demi using a brown chicken stock instead of beef?  I know that the taste would then be chicken-y rather than beef-y, but apart from that, would I be breaking any major rules?

 

[kyheirloomer]

Hungry Student, you really have to read labels. I once, f'rinctance, compared all the chicken stock/chicken broth brands in a local supermarket. There were 7 of them in total, with sodium levels ranging from the 300s to the 800s. By and large, Swanson was the worst, in terms of salt content.

I didn't compare beef stocks, but I have no doubt the same situation prevails.

For sure and for certain .25/ounce is a high price. But I'm concerned about your total production. Six cups doesn't sound like much, and, perhaps, you cooked it down too far?

 

[schmoozer]

And now for one final question: I've found canned stocks to have a really funny taste, something like the taste of canned tuna.  I'm not sure if this taste is from the process or from the can itself, but either way canned stocks are out.  I've used boxed stocks as Ed suggested, and I feel like they work pretty well for soups, but I'm considered about the amount of salt.  The stock I've used (Swanson) was so salty that I think it would quickly become inedible if I were to reduce it down enough for many of the French preparations.  Is there another brand that's a better choice, or should I perhaps try the "Low Sodium" variations?

A number of chefs and cooks around these parts happily use

http://www.pacificfoods.com/our-foods/broths/organic-ls-chicken-broth

Of all the commercial prepared stocks and broths, this is my favorite.  Much prefer my own,however ...

 

 

[chefedb]

If possible for a Glace d viande' I would try and use veal or veal and beef mixed, or all beef, not poultry.

 

[hungrystudent]

For sure and for certain .25/ounce is a high price. But I'm concerned about your total production. Six cups doesn't sound like much, and, perhaps, you cooked it down too far?

I feel almost certain that this is what I did, but I'm not sure what I'd do differently, given the same ingredients and equipment.  I am working in an 8 qt. pot, and once the ingredients were in, there just wasn't that much room left in the pot.  I am under the impression that an important part of preparing stock is allowing the liquid to cook down some and concentrate (the flavor and the texture), and once I let the liquid reduce a bit, this is what I was left with.  I think that at one point I had about 3 qts. of liquid in the pot, but I didn't feel all that comfortable adding more (I was withing about 1" of the top, and just didn't want to make a horrifying mess). 

I let the stock reduce until the flavor was significant, tasting along with a very tiny pinch of salt, as I didn't use any salt in the stock itself.  The final result, after cooling approx. 8 hours in the fridge, has a substantial body of taste, and after 8 hours has the texture of 3/4 set Jell-O.  I'm thinking that perhaps what I have now is 48 fl. oz. of highly reduced stock, which I can perhaps bring to a boil with a quantity of water to bring up my effective yield.  The problem then is that I think I'll lose most of the flavor. 

This is just extra frustrating because I'm used to getting 3-3 1/2 qts. of very flavorful chicken stock out of $10 of chicken and the exact same pot.

I'm not sure what the solution is.  In a perfect world, I would would be using a much larger pot and a higher initial volume of water, and I think I could substantially boost the flavor by using a remouillage (rather than water) to start the stock and by adding a bit of actual beef to the party.  The goal would be a 1 gallon yield from 8lbs of beef product (as given in "The Professional Chef").  That volume of yield would (for me) justify the cost and the time, but getting approx. one third of that is sort of a bummer. 

My goal, in addition to having a couple of quarts of stock available as a soup base, would be to have a quart of Demi-Glace, Glace de Viande, and/or Sauce Espagnole in the freezer and ready to be utilized spoon-by-spoon in making two-person quantities of sauce.  Eventually, I'd like to have the same thing set up with a quart of frozen velouté.  While my stock production method for white chicken stock is certainly sustainable, I remain skeptical of my brown stock pipeline.

And, as always, thanks to everyone for their support.

 

[chefedb]

 For home use ''Pour your stocks and demi's and glace's into the old fashioned ice cube trays and take out only what you need as you need it.   Or pour into plastic small sandwich bags and freeze.

 

[kyheirloomer]

Hungry, short of buying a larger pot (and, if you're going to continue making stocks in the quantity you indicate, that might be an investment rather than an expense) one solution might be to work in two batches. Proceed as you did, cutting everything in half. Then add enough water to just cover the ingredients.

One way of finding an affordible large stock pot is to haunt the flea markets and garage sales looking for an old pressure canner. Don't worry if it works; you're just interested in it as a pot. Most of them hold 20-22 quarts, and you can often find them for ridiculous prices, like $8-10.

But, to put this in perspective, according to James Peterson, in Sauces, 12 pounds of bones, along with the other ingredients, get covered with 9 quarts of water. The yield from this is 8 quarts (i.e., two gallons) of stock. Using the 8 pounds of bones you started with, yield should have been about 1 1/2 gallons. Not only is this a significantly larger volume, but it makes the stock affordible. Cost of ingredients: 6 cents/ounce.

 

[hungrystudent]

Here's an update:

First, thanks to everyone for being so helpful.  I was able to fund some cash for a new pot, and ended up with a 16qt stainless pot w/ a sintered bottom.  Not only can I make more stock at a time (6-8 qts quite easily, and I think I could push it up to 10 qts yield without too much trouble), but the increased volume makes it much easier to maintain a steady simmer that won't roll over into a boil.  I made beef stock again (the last batch turned into a really wonderful pot of French onion soup), using about the same amount of bones and 4 lbs of chuck (on sale).  The yield was just a touch over 7 qts, and I had to do much less hovering over the pot.  The stock came out very flavorful with a nice noticeable body. 

I made sauce espagnole and then turned that into a demi-glace which I froze up in my ice cube tray.  So, now I've got a quart of demi in 1-oz cubes and 2 cups of velouté.  I must say that using a reasonable size of pot made a huge difference.  I won't have to make chicken stock for a month now, and I can probably go 2 or maybe even 3 before I use up all of the beef stock.

Thanks so much for all the advice.  I just made a rice pilaf tonight, and was once again reminded how important good stock is to a good dish.

 

[paulkaye]

This is my first post and I'm also somewhat of an amateur so I apologise for my ignorance!

Brushing beef bones with tomato paste sounds like a great way to get sweet, caramel flavours. However, I have a 'customer' who can't touch the stuff (long story). Can anyone suggest an alternative?

Thanks in advance

 

[reenbase]

I'm not too proud to admit that I have used ketchup. Unless tomatoes are out of the question entirely.

 

[paulkaye]

I need to steer clear of tomatoes entirely. You wouldn't believe how annoying that is!