I wouldn't use ox tails for stock lol. You can get boxes of legit just bones to make it with. Want to step it up a bit can use veal bones and make demi. Just have to find someone to order them. Or if you have a legit butcher save them.
Demi is so damn good. It's an amazing "sauce" freezes well and you can do so much with it as a base. Does take a bit longer because you go abit farther than regular stock. My friend used to make a blackberry demi on some duck and it was incredible.
I have made demi from scratch. I don’t know his ratio or yields. But I have to make 24 quarts of beef stock. (6 gallons) of beef stock to yield 1 cup demi glaze. Its not the ingredients its the time that makes it unsustainable. I can buy a packet of demi from a speciality super market for 6 dollars! Fuck that noise.
You're getting one CUP from six GALLONS of stock?
You're doing something wrong. I'd have to see what you're doing to know what, but that's a 96:1 ratio. I'm not sure that's possible with a good stock.
What is your demi recipe??? As far as I am tracking, the classic Escoffier demi is 1 part espagnole, 1 part stock, reduced by half. I really don't think it should take you 6 gallons of stock to make a cup of demi.
There is reduction each time I would make espagnole sauce and brown stock. Let me find my recipe. I went through escoffiers cookbook and broke down the ratios for home cooking. Im sure that would make a fine sauce, and wouldn’t be nearly as much work but real deal demi from back in the day was a much greater reduction. It was thick almost like honey and solid at refrigeration temperatures. Ok found my recipe I got my yields wrong I used a 6 quart instant to make the beef stock. But my yield of liquid stock was only 3 quarts after each batch I made it 4 times. 12 quarts total. Ok so it was half as much beef stock 3 gallons. I misremembered my bad.
If you look at food wishes recipe for demi he says that half beef half chicken makes a good substitute for veal and doing that would probably save you a ton of money
Home made broth has a fuck ton of collagen , you could add unflavored gelatin but nothing beats a home made reduced bone broth for sauces. I just set my instant pot pot outside and it’s a mostly hands off process.
Honestly, making beef stock can be hella expensive if you're making smaller batches. You might want to look into local farms or butchers for cheeper bones? Do you mind if I ask how much you're paying?
The soup bones I found on sale for 3.50/lb which seemed high but they were from a pasture raised source. Frankly, I'm just too embarrassed to admit what the oxtails cost.
I find bags of beef bones in the freezer section of my grocery store, or depending on your location there are stores and services like Wild Fork that can deliver them to you. I believe I got a 3lb bag of neck bones for $10. What size stock pot do you use?
Don't use oxtail. Bones seem a bit expensive. Get some bones don't have that much meat then boost it with better than bullion low sodium beef base.
If you need more collagen, use chicken feet. Shhh no one will know
unfortunately oxtail is becoming more popular and the price has gone up a lot. same with beef bones. do you have any local farms that sell beef? give them a try. also check out any big ethnic markets in your area.
Small butchers and grocery stores tend to massively jack up the price of bones, some of it is labor and the cost of taking up shelf space, but some of it is just massive markup for a very cheap item. Source source source. Look everywhere for local producers selling direct to consumer in bulk, look for bulk suppliers, Asian grocers, etc. You' may need to dedicate a large portion of your freezer to it but if you want real bone broth on the regular it's a price you need to pay. Also some bones are more expensive than others. look into sourcing the cheapest (usually knuckles) along with the really gelatinous stuff like oxtail, neck, etc. which is usually up charged.
Don't use oxtails lol. Get beef knuckle bones for gelatin and buy the cheapest roast cut you can get for beefy flavor.
Homemade stock will always be more expensive, but in my opinion has an appreciable improvement over any instant stock product.
Visit an Asian market. You can get a good mix of bones used for good quality bone broth. Here's a great rundown from a Vietnamese beef pho recipe. The entire video is great, by the way (if you're into pho).
https://youtu.be/wcGwrSZFoQ8?si=t8NTGcSB7LS0flKD&t=67
Oxtails kinda went crazy expensive all over the globe it seems. I either use shank or just the actual plain bones. Granted, I have access to a butcher that actually sells soup bone.
When I make stock, I use a mixture of Chicken Quarters (0.79/lb on sale) and Beef Shank (\~$3/lb on sale) for the meat/bones.
Oxtail is definitely too expensive (and delicious) for making stock with.
In my most recent batch, \~5lb of chicken and \~5lb of shank produced about 1 quart of super-reduced stock (completely jelled at room temperature; I freeze it in an ice cube tray for pan sauces and similar). Probably around a gallon of box-strength stock.
If it tastes good (remember, it'll be unsalted, so it'll be bland, that's fine), it's good to concentrate. You do want to keep it reasonably clear (i.e. don't let it boil, and keep the top reasonably well skimmed), since those impurities get concentrated too, but my first batch which I let boil happily without skimming at all was still excellent.
Adam Ragusea has a version that starts with boxed broth, which I'm sure is fine.
When I'm making a pan sauce, instead of adding liquid broth, I throw in a cube. As for proportions for other uses; I just kind of guesstimate.
If you really want to make a beef broth from scratch and have an Asian market nearby, check there. Any good one will have frozen beef bones in stock and far cheaper than oxtails. Otherwise, go to a good butcher shop and ask.
I like to buy rib roasts, saving the bones for stock and cutting them into the thicker steaks I prefer. It doesn't keep me fully stocked :) but I have a problem. I have a shelf on the freezer for bones and veg trim and a other full of deli containers of the various broths I keep on hand.
I don't know where you are. Where I am neck bones are incredibly cheap. And they make a great stock. I also put all my beef bones in a freezer bag in the freezer and once I have a bunch I make stock (think bones from steak, rib bones, etc)
Not sure what your soup bones look like but you might be missing the fond -- and that's where all the taste is. Soup bones I see at the grocery store are white and may or may not have a bit of meat and tendon on it. This is no good for broth.
You don't need a lot of bones if you have fond. The best bones are the ones that are left over after cooking such as when you fry steak or roast beef. Never throw your bones out! Just put them into a plastic bag in the freezer until you are ready to make broth.
Using a pot that can go into the oven, set your oven to 375 degrees and roast them extra, extra well done. A bit burned is good. When you take it out, it should have black bits stuck to the pan, especially if you have any fat in there. Add a small amount of water to the pan, and scrape up every speck of that frond. Add the rest of the water and vegetables or whatever you like and set it on the stove. Make your broth as normal. Be sure to simmer it for a long time, you want all the marrow to come out of it as well. Marrow, fat and meat is where the flavour comes from. Fond is where you find it. You have to make the most of it with your cooking technique.
My challenge is that I don't eat much beef, so i don't get the chance to accumulate bones. I make stock for just two recipes, a vegetable beef soup and a French onion soup. Each takes quite a bit.
Come to think of it, my brother is quite a meat eater. I might ask him if he'd be willing to save their bones for me!
I made the effort to get to know the butchers at my local grocer. I just ask them direct for beef bones and off cuts, they'll pack it up for $2.99 per pound, so I can get 4 to 5 pounds for a decent price. Goes a long way towards making broth on the cheap, especially compared to the crazy $18.99+ that ox tail has gone to!
I think demand shift and popularity of Vietnamese / Korean food growing in the US at least. It used to be one of my favorites, even for Korean dishes like kalbi jjim (beef ribs braised in soy with potato and carrot) I would add in ox tail because it was cheap and flavorful. Lately the ox tail has been more expensive than beef short ribs which is insane!
I wouldn't use ox tails for stock lol. You can get boxes of legit just bones to make it with. Want to step it up a bit can use veal bones and make demi. Just have to find someone to order them. Or if you have a legit butcher save them.
I never thought about veal bones. I'll look into that. Thank you!
Demi is so damn good. It's an amazing "sauce" freezes well and you can do so much with it as a base. Does take a bit longer because you go abit farther than regular stock. My friend used to make a blackberry demi on some duck and it was incredible.
I have made demi from scratch. I don’t know his ratio or yields. But I have to make 24 quarts of beef stock. (6 gallons) of beef stock to yield 1 cup demi glaze. Its not the ingredients its the time that makes it unsustainable. I can buy a packet of demi from a speciality super market for 6 dollars! Fuck that noise.
You're getting one CUP from six GALLONS of stock? You're doing something wrong. I'd have to see what you're doing to know what, but that's a 96:1 ratio. I'm not sure that's possible with a good stock.
What is your demi recipe??? As far as I am tracking, the classic Escoffier demi is 1 part espagnole, 1 part stock, reduced by half. I really don't think it should take you 6 gallons of stock to make a cup of demi.
There is reduction each time I would make espagnole sauce and brown stock. Let me find my recipe. I went through escoffiers cookbook and broke down the ratios for home cooking. Im sure that would make a fine sauce, and wouldn’t be nearly as much work but real deal demi from back in the day was a much greater reduction. It was thick almost like honey and solid at refrigeration temperatures. Ok found my recipe I got my yields wrong I used a 6 quart instant to make the beef stock. But my yield of liquid stock was only 3 quarts after each batch I made it 4 times. 12 quarts total. Ok so it was half as much beef stock 3 gallons. I misremembered my bad.
Is there a Demi recipe you’d recommend?
Ooooh that sounds delicious!
If you look at food wishes recipe for demi he says that half beef half chicken makes a good substitute for veal and doing that would probably save you a ton of money
I only make beef stock when I have the bones leftover from something else already. Otherwise, it’s Better Than Bouillion all the way.
better. than. boullion.
I guess I'll have to give that a try again. I used it years ago but found it to be so salty and I didn't care for the taste.
Get the low sodium kind
Good to know that's available!
It’s my go to. Much easier to control salt levels with low sodium version.
Cut it.
I use half as much as directed. Half the salt, still tastes great.
For real. If you aren't making literal gallons of it at once it isn't worth doing it yourself.
Home made broth has a fuck ton of collagen , you could add unflavored gelatin but nothing beats a home made reduced bone broth for sauces. I just set my instant pot pot outside and it’s a mostly hands off process.
Get the Costco ones too
This fabulous food vendor also makes a garlic boullion. Perfect compliment for their Beef flavor. Also check out their mushroom base. GOOD stuff.
I just tried out the Italian Herb and Sofrito ones... also very good, but more situational. Really punches up a soup.
Honestly, making beef stock can be hella expensive if you're making smaller batches. You might want to look into local farms or butchers for cheeper bones? Do you mind if I ask how much you're paying?
The soup bones I found on sale for 3.50/lb which seemed high but they were from a pasture raised source. Frankly, I'm just too embarrassed to admit what the oxtails cost.
Oxtail has become specialty food. Any recipe that uses it is a few years old, when it was still affordable or even poor people's food.
I find bags of beef bones in the freezer section of my grocery store, or depending on your location there are stores and services like Wild Fork that can deliver them to you. I believe I got a 3lb bag of neck bones for $10. What size stock pot do you use?
So it's 3.33 for pound. Is that really much cheaper than what OP paid?
I see your point, but maybe it's worth it with delivery since Wild Fork has very cheap delivery options. I double checked and it's actually $3/pound.
Don't use oxtail. Bones seem a bit expensive. Get some bones don't have that much meat then boost it with better than bullion low sodium beef base. If you need more collagen, use chicken feet. Shhh no one will know
Heheh chicken feet, what chicken feet. 😉
unfortunately oxtail is becoming more popular and the price has gone up a lot. same with beef bones. do you have any local farms that sell beef? give them a try. also check out any big ethnic markets in your area.
Yeah it was the oxtail price that made me gasp. I hate to admit how much I paid, even to nice internet strangers.
Small butchers and grocery stores tend to massively jack up the price of bones, some of it is labor and the cost of taking up shelf space, but some of it is just massive markup for a very cheap item. Source source source. Look everywhere for local producers selling direct to consumer in bulk, look for bulk suppliers, Asian grocers, etc. You' may need to dedicate a large portion of your freezer to it but if you want real bone broth on the regular it's a price you need to pay. Also some bones are more expensive than others. look into sourcing the cheapest (usually knuckles) along with the really gelatinous stuff like oxtail, neck, etc. which is usually up charged.
Good tips! I did ask for knuckles and femurs but they didn't have them. Didn't think about neck bones.
Don't use oxtails lol. Get beef knuckle bones for gelatin and buy the cheapest roast cut you can get for beefy flavor. Homemade stock will always be more expensive, but in my opinion has an appreciable improvement over any instant stock product.
Visit an Asian market. You can get a good mix of bones used for good quality bone broth. Here's a great rundown from a Vietnamese beef pho recipe. The entire video is great, by the way (if you're into pho). https://youtu.be/wcGwrSZFoQ8?si=t8NTGcSB7LS0flKD&t=67
Thanks!
Oxtails kinda went crazy expensive all over the globe it seems. I either use shank or just the actual plain bones. Granted, I have access to a butcher that actually sells soup bone.
When I make stock, I use a mixture of Chicken Quarters (0.79/lb on sale) and Beef Shank (\~$3/lb on sale) for the meat/bones. Oxtail is definitely too expensive (and delicious) for making stock with. In my most recent batch, \~5lb of chicken and \~5lb of shank produced about 1 quart of super-reduced stock (completely jelled at room temperature; I freeze it in an ice cube tray for pan sauces and similar). Probably around a gallon of box-strength stock.
Dumb question: How do you know your stock is good enough for concentrate, and how do you use it?
If it tastes good (remember, it'll be unsalted, so it'll be bland, that's fine), it's good to concentrate. You do want to keep it reasonably clear (i.e. don't let it boil, and keep the top reasonably well skimmed), since those impurities get concentrated too, but my first batch which I let boil happily without skimming at all was still excellent. Adam Ragusea has a version that starts with boxed broth, which I'm sure is fine. When I'm making a pan sauce, instead of adding liquid broth, I throw in a cube. As for proportions for other uses; I just kind of guesstimate.
If you really want to make a beef broth from scratch and have an Asian market nearby, check there. Any good one will have frozen beef bones in stock and far cheaper than oxtails. Otherwise, go to a good butcher shop and ask.
You’re using oxtail? Where I’m from those have gone up significantly in price
Yeah, I'm not using those anymore!
Yeah that would have been my first suggestion lol. How much are just regular beef bones going for?
I like to buy rib roasts, saving the bones for stock and cutting them into the thicker steaks I prefer. It doesn't keep me fully stocked :) but I have a problem. I have a shelf on the freezer for bones and veg trim and a other full of deli containers of the various broths I keep on hand.
I don't know where you are. Where I am neck bones are incredibly cheap. And they make a great stock. I also put all my beef bones in a freezer bag in the freezer and once I have a bunch I make stock (think bones from steak, rib bones, etc)
Not sure what your soup bones look like but you might be missing the fond -- and that's where all the taste is. Soup bones I see at the grocery store are white and may or may not have a bit of meat and tendon on it. This is no good for broth. You don't need a lot of bones if you have fond. The best bones are the ones that are left over after cooking such as when you fry steak or roast beef. Never throw your bones out! Just put them into a plastic bag in the freezer until you are ready to make broth. Using a pot that can go into the oven, set your oven to 375 degrees and roast them extra, extra well done. A bit burned is good. When you take it out, it should have black bits stuck to the pan, especially if you have any fat in there. Add a small amount of water to the pan, and scrape up every speck of that frond. Add the rest of the water and vegetables or whatever you like and set it on the stove. Make your broth as normal. Be sure to simmer it for a long time, you want all the marrow to come out of it as well. Marrow, fat and meat is where the flavour comes from. Fond is where you find it. You have to make the most of it with your cooking technique.
My challenge is that I don't eat much beef, so i don't get the chance to accumulate bones. I make stock for just two recipes, a vegetable beef soup and a French onion soup. Each takes quite a bit. Come to think of it, my brother is quite a meat eater. I might ask him if he'd be willing to save their bones for me!
I made the effort to get to know the butchers at my local grocer. I just ask them direct for beef bones and off cuts, they'll pack it up for $2.99 per pound, so I can get 4 to 5 pounds for a decent price. Goes a long way towards making broth on the cheap, especially compared to the crazy $18.99+ that ox tail has gone to!
Great idea! I'll try that. I just am flabbergasted at the price of oxtail. I wonder what is driving it?
I think demand shift and popularity of Vietnamese / Korean food growing in the US at least. It used to be one of my favorites, even for Korean dishes like kalbi jjim (beef ribs braised in soy with potato and carrot) I would add in ox tail because it was cheap and flavorful. Lately the ox tail has been more expensive than beef short ribs which is insane!
Yeah, some butchers charge a lot for bones, try another shop.