I finally made decent beef stock the other day using some of the suggestions in this thread.
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Previously, I've tried it by throwing marrow bones in the crockpot. That works for chicken bones and broth, but not beef. It was watery and
blah.
I bought a 3-lb rack of beef back ribs, cut most of the meat off to cook separately, coated the (rather meaty) bones with about 2 Tbsp of tomato paste, and roasted them for an hour at 400F. When they were about done, I sauteed about 1/4 of a a chopped onion in the stock pot in about 1/4 cup of beef tallow that I had left over from the last time I cooked beef. I put the bones and juices into the stock pot, and added water well above the level of the bones in the pot. I brought it
just to a simmer, then turned the heat back down so that it would simmer very gently.
Four hours later, I had to cook myself a steak that I foolishly had pulled out of the freezer, and I also found some mushrooms on sale for a buck that day. I sauteed the mushrooms in butter, dumped half of the mushrooms and juice into the stock pot, cooked the steak, deglazed the pan, and put
that into the stockpot. I could have done the mushrooms earlier with the onion, but I wanted a few with my steak.
About four hours after that, it had cooked down about half-way, so I cooled it, strained it and put it in the fridge overnight. A stainless steel coffee filter is my favorite gadget for making stock and rendering fats, btw.
There was almost a cup of fat on top, so I rendered it down gently on the stove (like you would to make clarified butter). The rest of the stock is fabulous, although it could have cooked down more. It's a little watery. I'll know for next time.
The stock is fabulous, and so is the tallow! Beef tallow usually has a waxy, weird taste to me, and this stuff is almost as flavourful as the stock. Nice orangey colour from the tomato and beef.
Umami FTW!