Making Beef Broth

I make foundational beef or chicken broths about 3-4 times a year.  When I do, they last us for many months of cooking and recipes.

Fall and winter is the big broth making season for us because our soup and stew making increases by leaps and bounds in the dark, cold, hibernating seasons. To make the broth for these, all we need is a day when we will be hanging around the house - puttering, reading, doing the laundry, blogging or staying close.

Preparation is easy and results in a deeply rich flavored beef broth. The organic ingredients (since we are extracting the essence of all these, we don't want pesticide or hormone-laden stuff) don't need to be prepared in a fussy way. Carrots go in washed with ends nipped off. Celery, we cut in half to make sure it gets immersed. Onions go in peeled and whole. The long slow cooking time will reduce these veggies down.

The most active part of the recipe is roasting the beef bones before I begin. I learned this trick from the cookbook "Caprial's Bistro Style of Cuisine." Set the oven at 450F. Put the bones on a lipped tray with an unpeeled garlic or two and roast in the oven for an hour.  Put the bones in the soup pot, squish the garlic into the pot and then the fun part. Deglaze the roasting pan with a little red wine and scrape up all the little tasty, roasted bits and add to the soup pot.

Add water to cover and simmer 6-8 hours. Strain the broth through a cheese cloth (toss out the cooked out veggies - they've done their job flavoring and enriching the broth). Refrigerate (or put outside) until cool. Skim off the fat, put into 1 or 2 cup containers and freeze. Pop the big cubes out the next day into a freezer bag and voila - heart and soul warming broth that YOU made, ready for every recipe!

Making Chicken Broth

My mom made her own broths for our many soups. I learned that from her and have been glad of it. I've tried canned and boxed broths and...meh. It took me awhile to get a tasty result - I had bouillon cubes at the ready to get that "chicken" taste when I first started cooking on my own. I learned to use organic chicken and with their profound flavor, I never used bouillon again. It was then I realized that factory-farmed birds had lost their true chicken taste.

I hear people say it takes too much time and work to make a broth. Maybe so. But it's mindful, meditative cooking of the best kind. It's a great weekend activity and the broth can be frozen and used in ensuing months. The prep time is pretty small and much book reading can be done while the pot simmers.

The broth-making always starts with organic ingredients. I am extracting everything I can in the making of it and the thought of added pesticides, hormones and chemicals simmering out is more than I can bear. All my broths are made in a big honkin' 3 gallon stock pot - plenty of room for the good stuff.

I put a whole chicken in the pot (with heart and gizzard - no liver) and throw in whole onions, carrots and celery; then cover with water; and toss in salt and a bouquet garni of thyme, parsley and bay leaf. After an hour, I remove the breast and leg meat (it is nicely poached and can be used for anything) and put the carcass back in the soup pot to simmer happily another 4 -5 hours. Then I drain the broth through cheesecloth and refrigerate. I discard all the mushy solids - they've done their work and made the broth rich.

The next day I skim the congealed fat off the top and pour the broth into 1 cup and 2 cup containers to freeze. The day after I pop them out like ice cubes into a freezer bag and use as needed in soups and recipes over the next few months.

It's satisfying and nothing tastes better!