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Yesterday, in preparation for going over to the ranch to bring home some of the frozen meat from Big Bull, we needed to reduce the bulk of the un-cut bones of Big Bull that came home with us initially. I make soup out of beef bones (good soup) and then the well-cooked-out bones are stuck in the garden soil to decompose.
Cutting up frozen large bones (this was a very large bull) without a big meat saw (which is over at the ranch and isn’t easily transportable) is a strenuous and messy procedure, carried out in the back yard with a sycamore stump and an axe. Richard pursued it with moderate enthusiasm and great skill, packaging the bones in plastic freezer bags. There’s still a lot of soup bone in the freezer. Probably, um, forty or fifty soups’ worth of soup bone. Goina be a lot of beef stock in the freezer soon…
The cooks in the Duke’s Company (or any mercenary company or any household where slaughter took place) would have been familiar with the sight and sound of an axe hitting large nonhuman bones. The butchers’ quarter in a city…the yard of a manor house…the barton of a village farm…all would resound to the sound from time to time. And household small critters would be coming to pick up scraps.
This isn’t the first time Richard’s cut up something with an axe for me–Nameless Heifer was the first. Big Bull’s leg bones are a lot (!!!) bigger.
Bread and soup are, to me, very elemental foods, and when I’m baking or making soup, I feel a deep connection to all the cooks who went before–women, many of them. On a day like today, when a norther has blown in, I often start a soup. I’m not today, because this is Tuesday before Thanksgiving and I don’t need to cover the stovetop with one of my big soup pots. But come Friday…yeah.
There’s a cook in the new books, who was at first merely a tiny part, slightly comic. But she’s showing up more–with more sides to her character. I’m trying to keep her “in her place” because there’s enough going on already, but…she’s a hard one control.
Our neighbor, who has permission to hunt on our land, took a deer last week. Another one of those real life events that can translate into fiction very well.
And the gathering of friends for Thanksgiving–the whole sharing-the-feast experience–and the bit of fencing (pointy-steel kind) that we may do if weather permits–and the bit of crossbow practice that might take place, ditto–are all part of filling the well from which the stories flow.
The rest of this week will be consumed by cleaning, cooking, sharing time with friends, and then cleaning up the aftermath and cooking the bones.
Comment by Adam Baker — November 24, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
A question from someone who is totally and completely uninitiated in the ways of farms and cows and that sort of thing. What exactly does boiling the old bones do to a soup? Im going to assume there are various other things such as veggies and the like and not just a “Stone Soup”.
Comment by elizabeth — November 24, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
Oh, good–a reason not to do what I should be doing (I’m serious about the “oh good”–it’s not sarcasm!)
Bones are the foundation for the meat stocks–beef stock, chicken stock, etc. The flavor from shreds of meat adhering to the bones and in the marrow as it cooks out are what you want. You can either make stock proper (boiling the bones with strong-flavored vegetables and herbs, then straining them out and reducing the stock by simmering), then using the stock as the basis of a soup. You don’t get good stock by just boiling bones in water–you need to add the other things for the flavor they contribute, but they come out later. If you’re a purist, you strain the stock until it’s perfectly clear and if you’re a serious cook, you may even slowly simmer it down until upon cooling it becomes a jelly or solid, a little of which added to (for instance) gravy adds complexity to the flavor. I’ve never made it, but I know how. I’m not a purist, with either beef or chicken stock–I leave it opaque, because I want that extra richness, every bit of it. But stock is then wonderful for many things, and a freezer with stock in it makes possible amazing “quickie” meals.
Or you can put everything in with the bones and eat it when it’s done, fishing the bones out before serving. But it was my mother’s contention that you could not make a good soup out of just meat–you needed the bones in. There’s protein, minerals, and flavor.
Note: if you’re making stock, in particular, don’t salt it until it’s completely reduced (and maybe not then) because otherwise it’ll be too salty.
When I was a child, butchers would give favored customers beef bones for free–”for the dogs” my mother would say, and sometimes the dogs got the bones and sometimes she made soup for us. Then they began to charge for “soup bones” (typically “knuckle-bones” with a little more meat on them.) There are two basic ways to make soup from beef bones–the one I learned as a child, and the one someone taught me decades later. My mother’s way was to start with cold water, put the bones into the water with bay leaves, peppercorns, onion, garlic, chopped celery leaves and parsley, and a “horse carrot” (a big, strong-flavored carrot). When the bones were boiled out, she’d pull them out, along with the horse carrot, skim out the celery leaves and parsley (and if the onion was in big chunks, that) and add the vegetables for the soup–better carrots cut in chunks, potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, corn, whatever was available and affordable. Other herbs, too, if she could get them–sage, rosemary, basil, marjoram. Often a nice young cabbage cut in cubes. If she had any extra beef, she’d cut it in cubes, brown it, and add it, but more often it was a beef-flavored vegetable soup.
Later, someone told me to roast the bones before putting them in to boil…deglazing the roasting pan with wine. Again, this increases the complexity and intensity of the flavors. One of my favorite soups is beef-vegetable-barley: roast some soup bones until the marrow’s cooking out into the pan. Deglaze with red wine. In the soup pot, put the bones, the drippings and wine, chopped celery and celery leaves, chopped carrots, chopped onions, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, other herbs, (these all in proportion to the amount of bones and meat), and cold water. Bring to boil, lower to simmer. As time passes, and in order of “hardness”, add other vegetables, then, as they’re cooked, barley. The soup isn’t as thick as, say, potato soup or squash soup, but it’s not as watery as canned soup. The broth part should be opaque,full of tiny fragments of everything in it, with the larger pieces still intact. I used to put cabbage in mine, but cabbage began to disagree with me about ten years ago, so now I don’t, or I put much less. A beef soup benefits from a large slug of red wine in addition to what you deglazed the pan with (again, proportional to the size of the pot and the other contents. What vegetables you put in are reasonably optional; I always put diced tomatoes, corn, sliced green beans, and nearly always diced jalapeno peppers (whether in a can of Ro-tel or my own dicing.) When we had the San Antonio garden, I put in the big white radishes we grew (White Icicle) or if we had turnips, turnips, as well as chopped greens that happened to be in the garden. My mother liked green peas in a soup–me, not so much. But they do add flavor and heft. Of course a soup can also have cooked dried beans in it, for additional heartiness.
So basically–the bones are a valuable kitchen resource–any kind of bone. If you have a bone-in ham…save the bone with its shreds of attached ham, and combine it with dried beans (soaked overnight–or canned beans) and a chopped onion (might sautee it first, but not necessary) and garlic and make a ham and bean soup. That chicken or turkey carcass? Put it in a pot of cold water along with a chopped carrot, a quartered or chopped onion, some chopped celery leaves, parsley, bay leaves, peppercorns…bring to boil, simmer, strain (at least through a colander) and now you have chicken stock. Freeze it. What can you do with chicken stock? Well–take a cup or two of cooked chicken meat (bought or saved), a small can of diced tomatoes, your stock, some water, and a half-cup of barley–and you have a lovely chicken/tomato/barley soup. Or rice or pasta instead of the barley. Or add a can of corn or some frozen corn to the tomatoes, a little rice, and you’ve got a completely different soup. In minutes. Mixed vegetables & pasta & chicken stock. Spinach and rice and chicken stock…possibilities are endless. Any leftover bone in your kitchen is the basis for either a stock (which can become multiple things, including soups) or a soup or stew right then and there.
Um…basically, the homemade stocks replace bouillon cubes or “stock cubes” that you buy, or the canned or boxed liquid stocks (which to me look anemic) that you buy.
If you have a garden, boiled-out bones (no longer attractants for raccoons and coyotes and such) can go directly into the soil, where they nourish the micro-organisms that improve your soil and also contribute minerals directly (IOW, you use bones instead of bone meal.) I remember pulling one out to see how it was coming along and having it almost like lacework.
Comment by Adam Baker — November 24, 2009 @ 4:36 pm
Wow, lots of info, haha. Ive never been much of a cook, but Im hoping to learn more from my mom & grandma.
And Im glad I could contribute to your procrastination, haha.
Comment by elizabeth — November 24, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
Basic soups are easy. Cream soups, and soups where you use a blender or food processor, not so much. I make basic soups. IMO, everyone should learn how to eat well with cheaper foods, before learning to do the fancy stuff with expensive ingredients.
But I love to eat at the home of a good cook (better than I am, not hard) who uses said expensive ingredients. I have this friend…
Comment by Kathleen — November 24, 2009 @ 7:00 pm
A good stock is a wonderous thing….
FYI — it’s the cold water/raw bone combo that really pulls the gelletin out. (For Adam — Alton Brown on his Good Eats show has actually explained the chemistry behind the raw bone/cold water soup.) Then the roasted bone/water that gives the color/flavor complexity. Personally, I like to do 1/2 and 1/2 and that’s how I prepared my turkey stock for my Thansgiving turkey gravy (stock made last Sunday with a second bird).
Comment by elizabeth — November 25, 2009 @ 12:17 pm
Today’s culinary experiment (just what someone needs to do the day before Thanksgiving when guests are expecting a full traditional blowout dinner, right?) is a lamb stew. To reduce space requirements yet again–half the lamb hindquarter baked yesterday went into the freezer in one freezer-bag, having been cut up into chunks. It will be curry later. The pot on the stove has the rest of the lamb (quite a lot, actually), 4-5 potatoes sliced, two cans of the store brand of chipotle diced tomatoes, a bay leaf, a good slug of merlot, some parsley, a smallish onion chopped and sauteed with some chopped celery, and some parsley.
In theory, this will be ready in a few hours to be cooled and then stored in one-meal-size containers in the freezer.
Comment by Ray — November 25, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
I made my own chicken stock recently as we found out that my wife is allergic to certain ingredients that tends to find their way into store bought stocks (like soy and garlic).
It turned out to be a great boon as we started coming down with the flu shortly afterward and had it readily available for making chicken soups!
Comment by elizabeth — November 25, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
I’m glad you had the stock, but sorry you had the flu!
Comment by Adam Baker — November 25, 2009 @ 9:48 pm
Wow, can I come to your place for dinner some time? This all sounds so good! haha I’ll show up early and take lots of notes, haha.
Comment by Chuck — November 25, 2009 @ 9:52 pm
We had a leftover jar of turkey stock boiled down from last Thanksgiving’s turkey carcase that stayed in the fridge until June without being used, for whatever reason, long after it would have been safe to use. So I had these two rose bushes to plant, and I remembered a little book by two little old English gardening ladies who always put old drippings in the hole before popping in the rose plants. I’ve never had roses do so well as those did!
Comment by elizabeth — November 25, 2009 @ 11:08 pm
Chuck: Roses also love blood. They’re hogs for the right combination of nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron…which red blood cells have. If we ever do a sheep over here, I want to bleed it into our puniest rose.
Adam, I’m really not that great a cook. My friend Karen is that great a cook…I think that woman could turn particle board and old bolts into something so delicious we’d all wolf it down. I do have a hand for bread–others have said so, for all the varieties of bread I make–and I can make good basic one-dish things of meat+starch+vegetables in a sauce. If you want something that’s a soup or a stew with that sort of mix in it (and using as ’starch’ any grain or potatoes or dried beans), then I can make it tasty. But I don’t really go by recipe–I go by the look, the smell, and the taste. It’s mix-and-match, a pinch and a shake cooking.
Comment by Tina Black — November 30, 2009 @ 11:10 am
Recipe? What is this recipe you speak of? I learned to make chicken soup from my Italian grandmother, so the technique I use is at least 100 year old — and very much as you describe. Mine is simpler, in that my stock is just made from the carcass and water — but it spices up fine in its many useful incarnations.
Once I used some of my spare turkey broth to make Chinese dumplings, and they were fabulous — much better than the ones I made with commercial broths.
Comment by elizabeth — November 30, 2009 @ 11:21 am
There are recipes in cookbooks, you know. That’s what I was referring to.
I don’t follow them. I do what my mother did (my grandmother and great-grandmother, from whom she learned, having died long ago.) And of course I do experiment from time to time (and I think I use more garlic in my chicken stock than she did…back then, where we lived, it was harder to get garlic in the stores.) I’ve made chicken-carcass stock too–in fact, if I do roast a chicken, or fry a chicken (very rare, nowadays), the carcass or backs/necks/wings will go into a stock.
I have access to more fresh ingredients more of the year, which is great. We used to make soup in the winter because a) it helped heat the house and b) that’s when the right vegetables were available in our area–it was a prime source of carrots, peas, onions, and cabbage for the rest of the country before it was paved over.
Comment by Chae — December 12, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
Mmm, what a perfect time of the year to talk of soup and especially the hearty soups made with meat and bones! My favorite has always been the oxtail variety. It’s traditionally – in Korean cooking at least – served with the bones in the soup and bits of meat and cartilage sticking on the bones are devoured with a great relish. It’s gotten more and more expensive these days but it used to be quite cheap when you could find it. Imagine the great surprise and delight of my mom 20 years ago when she came across oxtails for literally pennies per pound. We ate so well that winter.
Comment by elizabeth — December 12, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
A friend of my grandfather’s once brought us a lot of beef from a friend’s ranch (that’s where I got my taste for range beef–it was during a severe drought and there was no grass–the cattle were eating cactus, mesquite, etc.) It was much more meat than my mother could afford, and despite its extreme toughness, we ate very well while it lasted.