More Stock – You can never have too much stock

Homemade beef stock is great to make; it fills your kitchen with delicious fragrance while it’s simmering and then fills your pantry.

My beef bones came with the ½ beef I bought last spring. The bones were a combination of plain bones and meaty soup bones. I checked at the local Wegman’s, and they seem to often have beef soup bones available.

Whatever bones you can get, make sure you roast them well to get the best flavor and color for your stock. I use a roasting pan and roast for a couple of hours at about 350 degrees.

Roasted beef bones in my stock pot

Beef boones simmering

Topped with 8 quarts of water and seasoned with a few bay leaves and some salt, I let the whole pot simmer for 5-6 hours.

When I feel like it’s ‘done’, I take all the bones out of the pot into a colander to cool a bit. Then I strip all the fat and meat from the meaty soup bones. In the picture, you can see the results. On the right are all the stripped bare bones. In the bowl at the top is meat, ready to be used for tacos or hot beef with gravy. On the left is all the fat and collagen. Chopped up, it ends up mixed with cracked corn as chicken treats packaged in sandwich bags in the freezer. Nice haul, yes?

The most tedious job is to skim the fat off the hot stock. I don’t let the stock cool or sit long. I use a tablespoon to carefully skim the fat that has risen to the top of the stock. I do it a bit at a time into a container, and once the stock is mostly free of fat, I’m ready to pressure can it while it is still hot.

Canned beef stock

So here is what I got from 15 lbs of beef bones: a pound or so of beef for dinners, and 12 shelf-stable pints of beef stock.

A week earlier, I dug out my meat and veg scraps from my freezer stash. These are all the butt ends of celery and carrots, onion skins, cooked chicken, pork, and beef bones from meals – I save all those scraps and leftover bones, and whenever the container is full, I make stock. I toss everything into a stock pot – no defrosting necessary- add some fresh celery, a carrot or two, a bay leaf or two, garlic cloves, and peppercorns. After simmering for two or three hours, the stock is ready for straining through a colander and canning it up. I just call it meat stock. It’s great for stews, fricassee, braising liquid, or whatever your clever mind can come up with!

Mixed meat freezer stock – 6 pints