So we had a big ol’ prime rib roast for Christmas dinner, which had 7 big rib bones left over. I just used the ribs to make a very nice beef stock. Sipping on a cup of it now and it’s very rich and delicious.
I make chicken stock all the time, but not very often beef stock, since I don’t usually have enough bones to work with. So I’m wondering at the possibilities. My two thoughts at the moment are, I have a bit of barley, so a nice beef barley mushroom soup for dinner sounds good. Or, should I boil the stock down to a demi glace and do something with that? And if so, what?
Actually, I think I will have enough to make the soup for tonight, with enough left over for demi glace- at least one meal worth of it. So what to do with demi glace in the near future?
I’ve been into making rice with leftover kitchen liquids lately, but nothing as tasty as beef rib roast stock.
Chilled goo from grocery rotisserie chicken packaging? Rice. Liquid left in the bowl after the pico de gallo is all eaten? Rice. The seasoned brown juice that winds up in the bottom of a tray of grilled zucchini & mushrooms? Rice. Packing water from canned vegetables? Rice.
A demi-glace is reduced by about half or so. For something like this, when I have a whole lotta stock and no idea what to do with it or want to make a concentrate for later use, I just cook it down to about 1/8 to 1/10 of the original and make a glace de viande. It should have a fairly syrupy consistency at that point. I then pour it into an ice cube tray, freeze, pop out the cubes, put it in a Zip Loc back, and, voila, I have super concentrated beef stock that I can reconstitute to the original volume at 1 part stock cube to 9 parts water, or, perhaps more often, use it as I would boullion cubes to add extra beefy flavor to a pan sauce, stew, that sort of thing.
Demi-glace is only reduced by half. I prefer glace de viande for my cooking, but be warned it takes a good bit of time; many hours for it to reduce to that level, as you don’t want to reduce it at a simmer. But it’s not really active work unless you’re fussy about skimming it and all that. (I don’t really care for my purposes.)
I ended up using half of the stock to make a batch of beef mushroom barley soup, and boiled the rest down to a demi-glaceglace de viande. Thanks, @pulykamell, I always thought what I was making by reducing stock to a fraction of the original volume was called demi-glace, but I should have known it only meant reducing by half, with the ‘demi’ prefix. Just never thought it through. I reduced the remaining beef stock down to less than a cup of amazing concentrated beef jelly.
Thanks for the recipe link! I do want to make Beef Bourguignon this winter, and I will. But I think I will be using my glace de viande to make the sauce for Steak Au Poivre for a New Year’s Eve dinner
It sure is, and I did have star anise on hand, but no bean sprouts, fresh basil, or rice noodles. There are a couple places nearby that make it better than I probably could, anyway.
I usually do a low boil for most of the process; fairly gentle bubbling, but definitely more than a simmer, with a good amount of steam seen rising from the stock. This way I can go from a couple quarts of stock to a cup or so of glace de viande in just 2-3 hours. I will adjust the heat down closer to a simmer as the reduction gets close to where I want it. Doing a simmer for most of the process seems like it would take forever. But am I ‘burning’ or somehow damaging the stock doing it my way? The outcome seems high quality to me.
I’ve reduced many a stock to a concentrate in my (many) slow cookers. Lid off, high temp, and it’s a breeze. I mean it’s a lot more likely to be cloudy (mostly due to my lazy scumming and straining though) but it doesn’t taste overcooked unless I overcooked the broth/stock in the first place (which I haven’t done in a while).
Fewer worries than a long simmer on the stove too.
