Skin & Bones: Home Stock Production

I need to restock (pardon the pun) my supply of Demi-Glace, so last night I made up a 13 quart batch of beef stock. Although I am as live-and-let-live as they come, It’s times like these where I really wish I could grab America up off the couch by her belt buckle, and scold her into getting in the kitchen more. The problem is, I wanted veal shin bones. Even the older less collagen rich beef leg bones would have done. Do you think there is a store within 80 miles of here that has them, or even a similar thing? Nope! And why not? Because no one uses them anymore.

Because we see only cans and boxed soups with marketing slogans that closely mimic how soup was once made. Today’s soup isle is like a 5th grade history book, a wall of pictures and slightly accurate representations of the past that seem just out of grasp of the actual spirit of how things were. I had to settle for the less ideal beef short ribs and back ribs at $2.49/lb. and I needed 8 lbs. Oh well, I’d get deeper flavor out of boiling a ribeye than from anything made by Swanson. So I pressed on, shelled out greenbacks, and got started.

After roasting the bones and Mirepoix in the oven with a little tomato paste, my pots of intense brown shimmering warmth were simmering away at an ultra-low bubble. The deep comforting aroma of being home wafted all around my kitchen, up the stairs, and into my wife’s nose as she called down “Mmmmm… that smell reminds me so much of my mother back home in Germany”. I made sure to top off the water as to not beach the bones and start charing things, and I headed off to bed, feeling like the king of all humanity.

That is until my wife’s alarm clock shattered this peace. I awoke, and when the familiar aroma hit me, it felt like Christmas morning. With nervous excitement, I bound out of bed, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. There it was. Two slightly reduced pots of bubbling hand made beef stock. Thoughts of French Onion Soup, Italian Minestrone, and Steak au Poivre with a demi-glace fortified cognac sauce shimmered dreamily across my still groggy mind.

I have to go to work today, so I don’t have time to finish building the Sauce Espagnole that make up the other half of the demi-glace. I guess that will have to wait until tonight. I teach a cooking class tonight until 9:00. So maybe I’ll have to wait until the next day. Oh well. I will have an extra day of anticipation and eager dreams of how great it will taste when I’m through with this age old alchemy. Maybe the $27 I spent on bones, onions, carrots, celery, and herbs isn’t such a high price to pay for three days of re- centering liquid meditation and weeks of brilliant dishes to follow. It is a kind of lonely thought when I realize that all my neighbors spent their Tuesday nights watching American Idol. I try not to judge. All I can think is, “If they only knew.”