Missing all that yummy cartilaginous goodness …
I finished the soup and served it tonight. And i did peel a full centimeter of fat off the top, first. It was great, and i sent the leftovers home with the birthday girl.
But as i was cleaning up, i licked some of that fat off my finger. OMG it was fantastic. Oxtail and onion flavored, and rich and smooth.
I’ll probably still put it out and hope the crows find it. But now I’m wondering if there’s anything i could use it for. The problem is, it’s a pretty strong flavor, so i can’t just use it to saute vegetables without having them taste like oxtail soup.
Not the worst problem to have.
It’s crazy and another example of things that used to be cheap but suddenly shot up in price. My mom used to make it precisely because it was cheap and, as a soup, stretched even further.
Unlike stuff like lobster (scarce) or even chicken wings (trendy), I have no idea what happened with ox tail. Where are all the cow tails going these days?
Lobster too has its cheap trash food history.
Right, but it’s easier to determine why lobster costs more these days than in 1820. Where are my oxtails going??
I’d imagine using it almost as a flavoring agent more than primarily as a fat? Like how many of use toasted sesame oil. A dab of it to a light olive oil to give some extra flavor depth?
There’s little chance you’ll enjoy this, but flavored fat/lard with onions on bread is a fairly common Eastern European snack. I remember my father saving rendered bacon fat and onion fat in a dish, refrigerating it, then smearing the fat on Polish rye bread, adding raw onions (and sometimes liverwurst) on top, sprinkling with salt, and eating it. When I lived in Hungary, this was a common bar snack at more old school pubs, though made with pork lard (or duck/goose fat) and sometimes duck/goose liver, known as zsirós kenyér, or “fatty/greasy bread.” But beef tallow would have a similar effect and taste just as tasty (if you like these sorts of things.)
I’m sure i would like it. I was actually thinking last night about how delicious that fat would be smeared on brown bread. And about the damage that would do to my arteries. 
Butter and some other fats probably aren’t as bad for you as they used to think, but beef tallow probably is.
Nice! Everybody I describe that dish to normally reacts with a face expressing anything from bemusement to absolute disgust. I personally rather enjoy it—it reminds me of growing up and many fine times drinking it up in a dark Budapest pub.
I would leave off the raw onions, because i don’t generally like raw onions. But it certainly makes sense as a culinary combo. And the fat is already strongly flavored with cooked onions, from browning a lot of onions when i browned the meat.
I made some today and a taste is delicious. The plan is to let it mellow overnight and have it tomorrow. There’s this YouTube chef, Chef Jean-Pierre, Who had a great recipe for zhuzzing up store bought beef stock that I followed for my base. Whole thing ended up pretty expensive, but might be worth it.