Beef Stock

Beef Stock is something that you are going to have to make or procure -- you aren't going to have it as a natural bonus product of your normal cooking, like vegetable stock, unless you are going Elizabethan on us and boiling your beef.

To make Beef Stock, you are best to buy bones from the butcher, and then boil them with some bay leaves to make your stock. Salt the water very lightly, but not too much; leave the salting for the recipe in which you are actually going to use the stock.

If you have cooked a roast that has the bone in (always the best kind, anyway, many feel), then that bone is a pan of Beef Stock waiting to be made. Chuck it in some lightly-salted water, boil for up to an hour, discard the bone, strain the stock into a plastic tub and freeze.

Don't worry about flavouring your Beef Stock with other things as you are making it; you won't always have the time, and it's enough of an achievement if you've resisted the temptation just to chuck the beef bone out while cleaning up in the kitchen after dinner. Besides, it's better to freeze the stock as is, giving you a more multi-purpose stock that you can dress up as appropriate for whatever you ultimately use it in. In the UK, you can buy fresh Beef Stock in the chiller sections of grocery stores. Otherwise, broth cubes or canned beef broth.

When you cook Black Beans, you can reserve and freeze the bean stock, and use that when you want a heartier stock to use in place of or to complement Beef Stock when the result would be right in a recipe.

Also called:

Beef

Fish Stock, Fumet