Soup, glorious soup (again)

[e_moon60]

This past week I made the first beef soup from Sir Loin the Luckless, from a HUGE joint-and-leg section.  This is, hands-down, the best beef-based soup I've ever made, and a lot of that is because of the beef.   The starting soup-bone package was probably a solid 5 pounds of bone and meat--there was definitely meat on that bone--with a lot of

Comments

[e_moon60]

If I had a grandmother-in-law with cattle, I'd certainly start showing an interest in the operation and see if it was possible to purchase a cow or two and let them run with her herd....maybe do some fence work, pitch some hay, help with dehorning and blackleg vaccination and stuff. Then, in the normal way, those cows would calve and you'd have your own Sir Loin the Luckless.

Just sayin'

[e_moon60]

If she's not doing any of the maintenance or care stuff, then any pasture-rent should be covered by the market cost of the calf. There's no "upkeep" cost beyond its mother's grazing, which--if you don't own the cow--is her problem. In calculating pasture leases, it's the cows and weaned young cattle that count, not the unweaned calves. A cow-calf pair is one "animal unit" (the standard used for setting carrying capacity of pasture) and thus one AU for lease purposes as well

[pgranzeau]

Oh, man, that looks gooood!

Mary Page sometimes does her own soup, but I don't really think she goes to all that trouble. It starts out as soup, and after a day or so, she generally adds a can of tomato soup to it. Anyway, by then, it's simmered down so far we could call it stew, not soup.

[e_moon60]

Pete, I didn't always do the roasting thing before making soup. I don't remember my mother browning the soup bones (maybe I was too young? Wasn't paying attention?) though of course she browned the chunks of stew beef for stew. But Brenda C. told me it would be better if I roasted the bones first, and I thought "Yeah, right" but of course had to try it just to prove it wasn't...and it was. So for the past several years I've been browning the bones. My early soups were good homemade soups, but browning the bones and having grass-fed beef to work with (and now, having found kosher chickens!) has really made a difference.

[mevennen]

Wow. Just....wow.

[sunfell]

Oh, total yum. You've gone most of the way to making demi-glace. That takes days to make- so I buy it pre-made from Williams Sonoma when they have it on sale.

Still, it makes the house smell soooo good.

Now I want to go out and build this smoker.

[e_moon60]

Demi-glace takes *way* too long. I'm patient, but not THAT patient. And you don't need much of it, any time you're using it, so despite the price, it's something to buy (at least, so far. At least, for me. At least, particularly, because a friend gave me a jar I'm still working on, slowly...)

Smoker...um....you know, it's only my grandmother's firm aversion to having pigs that's kept me from having a pig...(Sophie, up to then a city gal, was fine with the horse, dog, and cow, but put down her foot, my mother said, at a pig. I never met her; she died when my mother was 14. My grandfather married my step-grandmother when I was a little girl, and she a sweet person.

[sunfell]

From the recipes I've read, it does take at least 24 hours to do. I just doled out a spoonful of the beef demi-glaze I got from WS and put it into my Hungarian Barley Stew... wow. Beats boullion cubes all to heck.

Ah, but pork... there's a local farmer near Little Rock who is raising Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs- a rare English breed that makes exceptional tasting pork. I plan to enroll in the local CSA and the Sustainability group co-ops so I can get my mitts on some of this pork- it isn't cheap, but it sounds lovely. If I make this smoker, I can have a nice boston butt, or do tri-tips, sausage, brisket and chicken.

I'm really getting into home-grown slow food.

[e_moon60]

I once bought part of a show pig from the kid of someone who worked at the same office as my mother (it's sounding country already, isn't it?) and that was the best pork I ever put in my mouth. None of it was smoked--we just cooked it as fresh--well, frozen--meat. But wow.

[kristine_smith]

Must memory this.