Thirteen seasons ago, when Jes and I first met, she did not eat anything with bones in it. When we made it our routine to visit Pizza Hut every Wednesday for 50¢ wings, she always got the bone-out variety. Whenever my mom invited us over for chicken breasts and thighs and legs, she made a filet or two for Jes. And I can't tell you how many times I'd decided not to order BBQ ribs because Jes would be watching me eat them. Don't worry; I get the same effect when I have to see people bite something frozen.
I've at least made an art of eating meat off the bone. Ever since my college years, where countless chicken wings were devoured, I'd learned to utilize a fork to keep my fingers from getting messy. It's just one of those habits that stuck, though it takes more than a few balancing acts to glean bones spotless, especially ribs. Once in a while, I will dirty a knife, if only to display some etiquette.
It may have taken a meal of chicken cacciatore to bring Jes around, with meat that literally fell off the bone and left her to simply trim off the cartilage. She'll take a knife to a chicken breast now and then, or a bone-in steak, but she'll always opt for a filet if and when she can.
A Bone to Pick with You
As for my world, bones were more than simply the inedible structure within a flavor-packed, moist piece of dark meat (my preference), or the T of a tender chop, or the eye of a succulent hunk of ham. That is, it wasn't just the end of a meal. No; within my family, the bone's status was exalted as part of the meal, and for my brother and I at least, it was a delicacy to be included in it.
I'm talking about yebret, giddo's dish of unmatched fame which can only as yet be recreated by others in the family. Lemon-soaked, garlic-smothered, lamb-and-rice-stuffed grape leaves served steaming hot into an open pita, or as is. But when giddo was still with us, there were always bones in the pot. Remnants, yes, from a tall order of a lamb leg, from which he'd get meat for kebabs and burgers alike—the bones were cut and cleaned, boiled and prepped, and then cooked once more alongside those soggy green cigars.
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| August 26, 2007 - Giddo's Yebret and Bones |
Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
Each bone held a scrap or two of tough meat, which soaking in lemon juice not only infused it with such vibrant flavor, but also wore into and tenderized it. To get a chunk of lemony muscle off a bone was my favorite part of the meal, but you'd be surprised how few bones actually had any sizable piece of meat on them. So what, then, was the point of adding them? The marrow.
My brother loved it. My dad loved it. Giddo loved it. I...took a few years to get into it. It did, after all, have the same flavor as the meat; it's just that texture that gets to you. I could explain it for you, but honestly, it snot very appetizing.
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| April 7, 2013 - Jerm's Ossobuco |
Nowadays, though it's been a while since we've had lamb bones with our yebret, my brother occasionally cooks bones for us, whether they be loaded with meat as the central part of an Italian stew, or sections of beef bone prepared solely for consuming their marrow. I won't try to sell the marrow-eating anymore—it's just one of those things. But you'll be glad to know of one other way to ingest that goodness.
The Bone Broth
Previously, I'd mentioned the difference between stock and broth (rich vs. mild, concentrated vs. thin, unsalted vs. salted). Well, some people simply define "stock" as bone broth. I'll grant them that. Stock, for the most part, utilizes skeletal pieces for imparting flavor, nutrients and texture. I generalized "skeletal" to include shellfish. Indeed, some people say "vegetable stock" is a misnomer—that, unless it made use of bones, it is really only broth. Call it what you want, as long as we're talking about the same thing.
Jes and I went shopping one day and bought a prepackaged section of beef bone. This thing was obviously meant for one purpose, and I wanted to give it that. We got home, I stuck it in the freezer, and we waited for the motivation to actually do something with it. Well, motivation came in the form of 4 of my brother's roasted beef bones, each significantly smaller than the one we purchased. The leftovers were gifted and frozen (you see a pattern) until a Saturday's free time came along.
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| January 23, 2016 - Beef Stock |
Plenty of online literature suggests roasting bones prior to making stock with them, the first of them explaining it away as imparting a stronger flavor. Like roasting carrots before adding them to a stew, I can attest to that pleasant change of pace. However, the reason I didn't do the same to our 1½-lb beef marrow bone was firstly due to time-constraints, and secondly because I wondered if a fresh bone would add its own unique flavor. This wasn't exactly the proper way of testing that theory, but I really didn't care. This is a kitchen, not a laboratory. However, you will find that using an uncooked bone does add something "constructive" to the stock.
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| January 23, 2016 - Beef Stock |
This may be the opportune moment to mention the method behind a proper bone stock: the longer you cook it, the better it becomes. The minimum cook-time for simmering bones is 8 hours; the maximum is undisclosed. Many sources suggested 24 hours optimally, and that is what I went with. Ultimately, it depends upon the type of bones you are cooking. Fish bones, for example, wouldn't require as much time as chicken bones, and neither could compete with a mammal's femur.
The reason behind cooking bones for such a long time is to extract the most nutrients from them. Bones are a matrix of protein, calcium, magnesium, etc.; as harder surfaces break down, pockets open up and their contents melt away. If boiled over a long enough period of time, bones will become porous or even begin to dissolve completely into their stock.
Bones, cartilage, and skin are the greatest sources of collagen in the body. (Suddenly, the broth brand College Inn begins to make sense.) Collagen, a fibrous protein, boasts numerous health benefits, though it is important to understand that it collapses under high heat. Gelatin is the end-product of boiled collagen; it is so named because of its "freezing" (Latin) effect on liquids under refrigerated temperatures. Collagen, on the other hand, keeps its structure well into the range of body temperature. Can you imagine if it didn't?
Broken-down collagen is nutritionally just as good—not to mention more pleasant to consume—as naturally occurring collagen. As with anything our bodies digest, the resulting macro- and micronutrients are the literal building blocks of life. Our bodies make collagen if they have the ingredients at their disposal.
Getting back to particulars, knowing how long you're going to be applying heat is half the battle. Calculating how much you're going to be making is the other half. At this point, I had two options to consider: either I'd slowcook the stock in our 2-quart crockpot, or I'd leave it in a 5-quart pot on our electric stovetop and hope it never boiled over. I honestly wanted to choose the slowcooker, but the raw bone alone would have taken up half the space. So, when in doubt, go the extra mile.
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| January 23, 2016 - Beef Stock |
The final bit of flavor came from trimmings we had saved in our freezer. These included beef and fat as well as garlic leftover from some meal or such. After neatly arranging these six items in the pot, there was one crucial addition that almost every source suggests: vinegar. Especially in the case of our raw bone, the acid of vinegar helps break down chemical bonds. This results in, above all, an accelerated detachment of meat, marrow, and effectively calcium from the bone. I presume a bath or marinade would have done as proper a job (something to try next time), but instead I poured ½ cup raspberry red-wine vinegar over the bones. I would say keep red-wine to red-meat and white-wine to white-meat, out of preference; the raspberry just happens to be the only kind we have at the moment.
As for the amount of vinegar to use, it varies based on the type of bone and the amount of water. Some people attest to having a strong vinegar "odor" while cooking, and use less based upon that result. By comparison, my vinegar-to-water ratio was higher than suggested, and the overwhelming aroma was not vinegar. More on that later.
I can't measure the water accurately, because when making any broth you should go by the amount of solids and the dimensions of the pot. That said, as you should have expected, I added filtered water to cover. Finally, for this first stage, I added 2 bay leaves, 1½ teaspoons whole peppercorns, and 1 Tablespoon dried parsley (for lack of fresh). Then you bring this to a boil and turn it down to a simmer, which I left on the stove for ~13 hours. This point was the most stressful, honestly, because I had started all of this at midnight and proceeded to sleep through at least the first half of this cook-time.
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| January 23, 2016 - Beef Stock |
Bubbles naturally rise to the surface when boiling water; however, when cooking meat, vegetables, or even pasta, there is more to those bubbles than air. The uppermost layer of broth becomes a film of "impurities"—traditionally containing more unhealthy components (which I won't scare you with) than they do nowadays. In our case, denatured (broken-down) proteins are what form this sudsy surface. Recalling that collagen is one such protein, leaving this foam where it is will ensure that it remains a part of the cooled end-product. Because it attributes a cloudy look to broth, however, some people skim this off (while it is easiest to do so, i.e., boiling).
Other people—and this goes back to a previous step—cook their bones once over to reduce the amount of available protein before bathing them for stock. For the boost of flavor and added clarity, one is trading nutrition and texture, because of the significant lack of gelatin in the end. "They" say that you know you've made stock right if you achieve that jelling texture, but "they" must not like roasting their bones.
Since I utilized both raw and roasted, I believe I got the best of both worlds. But it's the roasted bones that really made cooking this worthwhile. Either that, or we were simply driven insane, because they were all we smelled throughout our apartment for literally every minute of that Saturday. Beneath that scent was the garlic; the vinegar never even crossed our nostrils.
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| January 23, 2016 - Beef Stock |
Vegetables give even more nutrition to stock, and actually, some of them can contribute more calcium than the bones would (see here). They also add vibrancy to the flavor, as do fresh herbs. But they obviously don't require as much heat as the bones do, which is why they're added nearer to the end of the bath. At 13½ hours in, I added frozen vegetable scraps (from carrots, celery and onions), about an equivalent amount as the frozen beef trimmings. Additional water as needed kept these mostly submerged. The problem with vegetables is that they tend to float.
After simmering for another 6½ hours, fresher vegetables went in: 1 celery stalk, 1 carrot and the skins of 1 onion. Then I kicked up the heat very slightly (still considered low) for the final 4 hours.
As midnight rolled around once again, the heat went off and I was prepping a strainer-cheesecloth combination over a 2½-quart glass bowl. If possible, I would advise using two sets of hands for this. I managed without, but only barely. Did you know clear tape loses its adhesion under extreme heat?
I'm not particular about broth clarity, and after the hassle of straining once I definitely wouldn't have chosen to run it through a second time. Besides, of all the things our kitchen has, large containers are a rarity. We ended up with nearly 2 quarts of liquid, as measured after due refrigeration and transferrance to a more freezer-friendly vessel.
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| January 23, 2016 - Beef Stock |
It's important to let this cool properly before placing in the refrigerator. That oil slick is still well above 100 degrees. I loosely covered this bowl for the night while it sat on the counter (did I mention our kitchen is more sterile than most?), then put it in the fridge once morning came.
For the aftermath and more useful tips, jump to the end of my next post.
Other sources:
http://paleoleap.com/eat-this-bone-broth/
http://whole9life.com/2013/12/whole9-bone-broth-faq/
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