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Beef Broth
2 pounds meat from the shoulder or shin 2 pounds bone 3 quarts cold water 1½ teaspoons salt Cut the meat into small pieces and put it with the cracked bone into kettle and cover with cold water. Set in slow oven and cook from 8 to and cover with cold water. Set in slow oven and cook from 8 to 12 hours. Strain through colander, add salt to taste and cool quickly. When cold remove the fat. Serve cold , as a jelly or heat to the simmering point, but do not boil.
A long, low extraction of beef and bone, meant to be clear and lightly salted rather than concentrated. The whole point is heat low enough that the liquid never bubbles.
- Oven temperatureA slow oven is somewhere in the region of 250-300F. At that sort of setting a kettle of three quarts will sit at or just below a simmer, which is what keeps the broth clear; hotter and harder cooking tends to cloud it.
- The meat and boneShin is the right cut for this: lean, gelatinous, and cheap. Ask for the bone cracked or cut crosswise so the marrow and collagen are exposed, otherwise the eight hours buy you very little.
- Cold water startStarting cold and raising the heat slowly draws soluble protein out before it sets, which is why the yield is a savoury broth rather than boiled beef in hot water.
- TimingThe recipe allows anything from eight to twelve hours; the longer end will generally give a firmer jelly. Check the water level once or twice and top up if the bones begin to sit proud of the liquid.
- SaltA teaspoon and a half for three quarts is very light, and the recipe has you correct it at the end rather than at the start. Salt after the volume has reduced, or it will finish sharper than intended.
- Cool quicklyFollow this instruction literally. Stand the strained broth in a sink of iced water and stir it down, then refrigerate; a large pot of warm stock left to cool slowly on its own sits for hours in the temperature range where bacteria multiply.
- ReheatingHeat to the simmering point, as the recipe says, and no further. Boiling will disperse whatever fat escaped the skimming and cloud a clear broth.
- YieldSomething under the original three quarts once strained and skimmed, though the recipe gives no figure and the loss depends on the oven. It should set to a soft jelly when cold if the bone was well cracked.
Invalid cookery was a standard division of household manuals well into the twentieth century, when nursing the sick happened at home and the cook was expected to produce food for someone who could keep down very little. Beef broth and beef tea were the backbone of that chapter, credited with a restorative power far beyond what their actual nutrition supports “ a long extraction of shin bone yields gelatin, salt and flavour, but is nutritionally incomplete. The instruction to serve it cold as a jelly reflects the gelatin content of shin, and may also reflect a period belief that a chilled, firm-set broth was easier on a weak stomach than a hot liquid. The same method, minus the invalid framing, is simply an unclarified, unbrowned stock.