Making beef stock - Part I - cooking the stock

Beef stock, like chicken stock, is very simple to make at home. It takes several hours, but it's a simple process.

First, I took soup bones and bones I saved from various beef cuts (round steak, rib eye steaks, chuck roasts, etc) and placed them in two roasting pans.



When we bought our 1/4 steer last fall we asked the butcher to save the soup bones and include those in our package and we also cut and saved the bones from various beef cuts we've eaten over the past several months. When I accumulate enough bones to fill up two roasting pans I know it's time to make beef stock.

You'll notice that the soup bones have a lot of meat left on the bone.



When I cut bones out to save I also leave a good amount of meat around the bone.



You don't want to use completely bare bones in your stock.

I turned the oven up high - around 450F - to get it warm. Then I turned it down to 325F and put the roasting pans full of beef bones inside. I roasted them for several hours until they looked something like this:



Next I added the vegetables. To each roasting pan I added carrots, celery, coarsely chopped and peeled onions, and several cloves of garlic.



Then I put the pans back in the oven and roasted for another hour.

After that the pans were removed and the veggies and bones were placed in stock pots. When I make stock (either beef or chicken) I'll do a very large batch at once and need to use two stock pots. The contents of my large roasting pan go into the large stock pot and the contents of the smaller roasting pan go into the smaller stock pot.

Next I de-glazed the roasting pans by adding water and scraping the bottoms of the pans to get up all the crusty bits. There is a lot of flavor in those bits and I want it all to go into my stock!





The de-glazed pan contents were added to the stock pots.

While the veggies and beef bones were roasting I had assembled my spices. I used bay leaves, peppercorns, lemon thyme, and ground thyme. Again, the larger bowl holds the spices for the larger stock pot and the smaller bowl holds the spices for the smaller stock pot.



The spices were added to the stock pots.

Here you see what they look like at this point:





Then I turned up the heat to high and brought the stock up to a boil. Once it was boiling I turned the heat down and let it simmer. The stock needs to simmer for at least four hours and this batch ended up simmering for five hours.

It should look something like this when it's finished:





The next step is straining the stock. We set up a large colander on top of a very large bowl and placed them both in the sink.



Then we carefully poured the contents of the stock pots into the colander. Our routine is to first empty the small stock pot. Then we pour the clear stock that we caught in the big bowl back into the small stock pot. That will allow us to use the bowl again for the stock from the larger stock pot. When the bowl is nearly full we pause, empty it into the small stock pot, and then continue straining until the large stock pot is emptied.





After this first round of straining we did a second straining. The second straining involves clipping several thicknesses of cheesecloth to the colander and straining through the cheesecloth.



This second straining helps to make an even clearer broth.



We follow the same straining method as before - emptying the small stock pot first, etc. When all the stock has been strained, then we unclasped the cheesecloth and lifted it up out of the colander.





And then we used a wooden spoon to press the cheesecloth bag against the colander to squeeze the last of the stock out.



After all of the straining we were left with one large stock pot full of beef stock.



We then sorted through the strained vegetables and bones and cut up any remaining meat. This time we gathered up about six to eight cups of beef. The beef was saved and will be used for soup or hash.



Then we covered the stock pot and put it into the refrigerator to cool. Usually we cook up stock one day and can it the next. That allows plenty of cooling time which will make it easier to remove excess grease.

Tomorrow I'll show how to finish up the stock and pressure can for long-term storage.