Beef stock

Spitfir3

Spitfir3

Spitfir3

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Hello all,

Right I made a beef stock yesterday - similar to this recipe http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/roast-beef-stock. I had at least 2kg bones (probably more - 2 large and 1 small) they were roasted for about 50 mins from frozen (along with the veg) although I should probably mention that over the Christmas week the electricity cut off for an unknown period of time (bloody meters!) - probably not longer than 2 days so potentially they could have gone off?

Covered with around 4L of water and simmered for about 4-5 hours (appreciate this is probably not enough) - final yield of a smudge under 2L. The colour is more similar to chicken stock - perhaps a bit darker (didn't add any tomato puree). However, it does not taste nor smell like beef; to be honest it tastes a bit like cabbage.. the smell is cabbage, garlic, slightly smoky.. almost like dried Morels? Not absolutely disgusting but slightly unpleasant..

So.. what's it supposed to taste like? :D I did notice at the end, a marrow bone.. the marrow looked almost like grey sludge :confused: Also I checked this morning after it spent a night in the fridge, it hasn't set like a Panna Cotta but it is very viscous - almost like a gravy.

I'm tempted to throw it out but I did invest a lot of time in it!

Any thoughts?

Cheers :)
 
I think it's likely it would taste/smell worse if the bones are off though I'm not 100% sure from your description. Marrow looking like a weird sludge isn't that unusual either - and if it has mostly been in water grey isn't an entirely impossible colour.

Personally I think the issue is that you didn't have enough actual beef in there. You've essentially got a vegetable and bone stock (the bones will be why it is so viscous - this if a good thing). I'd suggest cooking up some beef mince in the liquid you've already got. Approach it in a similar way to way you did the vegetables.

A good (but somewhat OTT) beef stock recipe is below and might provide some extra inspiration. You can ignore any references to sous-vide.

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/beef-stock
 
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My beef bone broth looked like this. Just a hip bone one carrot one potato salt and pepper.

Stock would generally be a mush of veg as well
 
Awesome cheers guys :) Yeah it looked like yours maccapacca.

FT - I even saw that recipe a few days ago! I saw the addition of beef mine as just extra faff and wouldn't bring much :o I actually thought the stock would be completely set with the bones I was using, maybe a longer simmer would be needed to extract more collagen/gelatine?

So I froze it yesterday, would it be okay to defrost, roast some beef mince and cook it and portion then freeze again?
 
I'm sure it'll be fine yeah :)

A longer simmer might work /re the bones though personally I tend to play a bit loose about my simmering times. You could always add a chicken carcass to the beef when you simmer it to extra some more gelatin. And yeah, you can definitely defrost the stuff you've got and recook it all.
 
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