Text 14071, 76 rader
Skriven 2007-04-15 21:08:28 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
Ärende: Beef soup
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Beef Whatever Soup.

1 or 2 pounds of meaty beef bones
1 large onion, chopped
2 large ribs of celery, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 lb carrots, chopped
1/4 lb mushrooms, minced
4 - 6 red ripe tomatoes, chopped
water
salt
pepper
thyme
parsely
bay leaves

Start the bones slowly in a warm stock pot and allow the fat to
render from them, sneaking the heat up a little higher as some
of the fat tries out.  When there is some fat in the pot, add
onion, celery,  pepper, and carrots and raise heat to medium
high.  Stirring often, brown the bones and the vegetables.  Stir
in the mushrooms and tomatoes and allow the moisture from the
vegetables to be released.  When a bubbly simmer is reached, add
water to cover all and season to taste with the salt, pepper,
thyme, and parsely.  Add bay leaves. Cover and maintain at a 
simmer for about four hours.

When all the vegetables in the broth have more or less melted into
the soup, remove the bones from the pot and pick the meat.  Discard
the bare white bones, chop the meat and return it to the pot (you
may, at your option, keep or discard the fatty, gristly, or 
cartilagenous bits but if it were me I'd eat them, perhaps sharing
them with the dog.)  Allow the soup to cool, covered, until 
comfortable enough to set in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day, use a fork to lift off the crown of fat covering the 
broth.  I always put about 1/8th of this fat back in the pot when
I reheat the soup, because soup needs some fat for flavor, but you
can do with it whatever you want.  Heat the soup gently, because
it is now ready for whatever you care to do with it.

Good things to add to this base to make Soup:

 Barley
 Corn
 peas
 Sliced zucchini or yellow summer squash
 Spinach
 Diced purple-top turnip (NOT bigass yellow rutabagas.  A purple-top
  turnip is nasty by itself, but simmered into a soup it is almost
  tolerable.  A rutabaga, however, is inedible no matter what.)
 More carrots.
 Parsnips
 Beet greens
 Beet root, if you don't mind a very strange, blood-red stock.
 noodles of various kinds, especially orzo, alphabets, or
  ditalini.
 Okra (not very much, just a pod or two thinly sliced. The little
  hairy green wheels look cool floating in beef vegetable soup.)
 Shredded cabbage.
 If you put in shredded cabbage, also put in red kidney beans. They 
  go well together.

This doesn't, BTW, make some frou-frou European first course soup.
(No offense intended, Ian. [g]) This is soup for your soul, which 
should be served with a chunk of good rustic bread from that little 
bakery down the street, as a meal unto itself.

The end.
 


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Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, 
minutus carborata descendum pantorum
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