Beef Bone Broth, Part 1

I remember as a little girl begging "Mama" for a bone from the broth she was making so I could suck the marrow out of it. Probably my mom was not even aware of all the life giving nutrition in that kind of broth. She was simply following the dictates of what her farm-women ancestors had done before her. All I know is my little farm girl body must have recognized a biological need for that nutrition.

Good beef broth is a bit trickier to make than chicken broth. It's not so much that its harder, just more problematic for a couple of reasons:

1. It's harder to get a hold of good marrow bones. Chicken is fairly easy. You just use your chicken carcass. But beef bones are scarce. Most stores don't offer them anymore even if you were willing to make marrow broth from big industry cattle...which I'm not! I find it's easiest to collect beef bones over a period of time. When I get meat from our grass fed guy I pick up a couple of soup/marrow bones, or some soup shanks and stick them in the freezer. I also save any bones from cooking, sometimes including a few ham or ham hock bones as well. When I have a decent supply built up it will be beef broth making time.

2. The other reason beef broth is trickier is flavor. Chicken broth seems to taste good no matter how you make it. But beef broth requires some different techniques to get a good meaty flavor. Oh, your broth will still be healthy by just throwing everything in a pot of water, but it will lack a wonderful toasty meaty "beefy" flavor.

So here's how I do it. When I have like a cake pan full of bones I arrange them in the pan, salt and pepper them, drizzle them with an acceptable fat like lard, bacon fat, coconut oil, whatever. Place them in a 425 degree oven and then watch them fairly closely while you're working in the kitchen. After about 15 minutes or so they should be sizzling and you can turn them over. Allow them to sizzle awhile more watching them closely. The photo below shows what you're aiming for; sizzling, toasty, browned, great smelling, but not burnt!

Take all those pieces out of the pan and transfer them to a pot. Next you want to add a cup or so of water to the pan and scrape up all that great crusty tasty stuff from the pan. There is a lot of flavor in there that you don't want wasted. Don't worry about defatting. That will come later if you wish. Pour that into the pot as well.

Now fill the pot with whatever else you have to go in there. I had a few bits of ham hock meat and a bit of beef from a leftover roast that I had stuck in the freezer at an earlier time. You know, all those quirky bits that nobody can actually chew or eat? Don't toss them! Stick them in you soup-making freezer bag. They will add a lot to your broth later.

Fill the pot with enough water to completely cover. The amount of beef material shown in my pan is enough for a nice full pot of broth.

I am not putting any vinegar in at this point. Since my bones have quite a bit of meat on them I'm going to let this cook for a few hours and then remove that meat before continuing on with the bones. Which brings me to another issue that people often ask about. When making a long-cooked broth like this when do you add the savories...the veggies? Here's what I have found through many years of making broth. When I add the veggies, particularly carrot, to the broth early and let it slow cook for 24-48 hours with the bones, the broth takes on an over-cooked carrot taste that is very unpleasant. Bones are meant to be long cooked; veggies are not. Even with meat, I don't leave that in long term because I don't think the broth tastes as well when it's done.

In a few hours I will pull off the meat and freeze it for soup later. If you don't have any meat on your bones that you want to salvage you can just go right on with the next phase.

At this point the broth and bones will go into the crockpot, with a good dash of apple cider vinegar to aid in leaching all the good minerals out of them, and then you can leave that to slowly cook over night.

Tune in tomorrow as I move through removing of the marrow, the flavoring of the broth, and the final steps of adding the savories and herbs to season the broth and finish it off.