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Beef Soup
Mrs. Wm. H. Low.
Cut all the lean off the shank, and with a little beef suet in the bottom of the kettle, fry it to a nice brown; putin the bones and cover with water; cover the kettle closely; let it cook slowly until the meat drops from the bones; strain through a colander and leave it in the dish during the night, which is the only way to get off all the fat. The day it is wanted for the table, fry as brown as possi- ⚫ ble a carrot, an onion and a very small turnip sliced thin. Just before taking up, put in half a teaspoonful of sugar, a blade of mace, six cloves, a dozen kernels of allspice, a small tablespoonful of celery seed. With the vegetables this must cook slowly in the soup an hour; then strain again for the table. If you use vermicelli or pearl barley, soak in water.
A two-day consommé-style beef broth: a brown stock made one day, then re-infused with browned vegetables and whole spices the next. Nothing here is difficult, but the sequence matters more than any single quantity.
- Chill the stock in the refrigerator, not on the counterThe overnight rest is only there to let the fat set into a liftable cap, and a refrigerator does it better. A large pot of warm stock left out all night sits for hours in the range where Clostridium perfringens and other bacteria multiply; strain it, cool it quickly in a shallow pan or an ice bath, then refrigerate uncovered until cold.
- What a shank gives youBeef shank — the cross-cut foreleg with its marrow bone — is still sold as soup bones, and cut into rounds as osso buco (more often veal). The recipe gives no weight and no yield. Ask the butcher to saw the bones so the marrow is exposed.
- Brown the meat, not the bonesThe lean is cut off and fried in suet, and the bones go in unbrowned and are covered with water. That gives colour and roasted flavour from the meat and clean gelatin from the bones. Suet can be replaced with beef fat trimmings or a neutral oil.
- Slowly means barely trembling'Until the meat drops from the bones' will take several hours at a bare simmer with the lid on. A rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and clouds the broth, which defeats the second straining.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg seed.