Bone broth for soups, stews or a hot drink
A typical sight in the restaurant kitchen where I worked was a pot of simmering veal stock on the stove. This became the base and flavoring for many a delicious sauce and soup.
I usually keep a bag of tendons, sinews, and meat scraps in the freezer, at the ready for stock.
- 2 large carrots
- 1 large yellow onion
- 1 8-inch (20-cm) leek
- 3.3–4.4 lbs. (1.5–2 kg) veal bones, chopped into chunks
- miscellaneous meat scraps
- 10 white peppercorns
- 3 bay leaves
- a few sprigs of rosemary, thyme, and parsley
- 1–2 tablespoons salt
- 3 tablespoons tomato purée
- water to cover the meat
Preheat the oven to 430ºF (225ºC). Peel and cut the vegetables into chunks. Place them with the bones and the rest of the ingredients—except the water—in a greased roasting pan. Add dollops of tomato purée on top so the purée will roast properly, as this mellows the acidity of the tomato a little. Roast the bones thoroughly for 40 minutes, until they have an appetizing color. Remove the pan after half the cooking time, and mix the bones so they get browned evenly all around.
Using a slotted spoon set everything in a large stew pot. Pour water over until just barely covering the bones. Add salt, starting with the smallest amount suggested. Bring to a boil and let simmer over low heat and without a lid, for 8 hours. Add more water occasionally, as it will evaporate as it boils.
Remove the bones from the pot and strain the stock into another pot. Let this stock cook without a lid until reduced to half its original volume. Taste for salt, and add more if needed. Strain again, and let it cool. The difference between a light stock and a concentrated stock is simply the length of the cooking time, to reduce the volume of stock to a dark stock; the flavor of a concentrated stock is far more intense.
Skim off the fat and fill an ice cube tray with the stock. Freeze the tray so you have the cubes on hand when you’re making a soup or a sauce. This way you’ll have a stock that’s free of additives, which something you can’t get when buying stock in bottles at the grocery store.
Removing the fat from the stock before freezing it doesn’t mean that I prefer a lean stock. I do it only because the fat oxidizes when it boils for so long, and as a result it doesn’t taste very good.
Veal stock is usually prepared without salt, but I add some because I prefer the taste. I like to take a frozen cube of veal stock and add it to a mug of boiling water. With the addition of a tablespoon of organic coconut oil and some chopped herbs, this drink becomes a real powerhouse.
The recipe is taken from my newly released cookbook Low Carb High Fat and Paleo Slow Cooking.
LCHF Made in Sweden 