Beef Stew

This is the story of a beef stew. It begins very early, a long ways back. In some ways, I suppose, it begins when we bought the steers. Or maybe when the steers were born. Or maybe when the first cow was created. Or maybe on the First Day of Creation. We are eating part of the Big Bang. Whoah!

However, purely for the sake of having a beginning of this story, let’s start on Monday morning.

In the midst of breakfast, Daddy put four soup bones in a pot and roasted it in the oven with an onion, 3 cloves of garlic, a pint of red wine, a pinch of salt, and water. We simmered this all morning during school.

And through our trip to the farm to do chores.

Through the feeding of the animals, and the digging of the vegetables. Through violin lessons.

When we got home from violin lessons, the girls picked through the elderberries and got them dehydrating, while listening to The Sable Quean by Brian Jacques.

Daddy pulled the bone out of the stock and trimmed all the meat and other solids, and set them inside.

He strained the stock through cheesecloth, and set aside one quart to go in the soup, and another three quarts to cool.

Meanwhile we sautéed a couple of fresh carrots, fresh parsnips, fresh garlic, and fresh celery in butter.

And hot pan seared some stew beef in bacon fat. (because it’s healthy).

We put them all back into the Dutch oven, and dumped in the two pints of diced tomatoes that didn’t seal the Saturday prior (see? I told you they would make another appearance). Then we filled it up with water, sprinkled in some parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, then added some cheese tortellini and let it simmer another 15 minutes.

That’s what was left after supper. If we were proper food bloggers we would have taken a picture of the finished progress and probably some pictures of the whole family, especially the cute children in immaculate outfits enjoying this wholesome food with cherubic faces at a neat table with a spotless tablecloth.

As it actually happened, it was not popular with any of the kids except Winnie, and so we ate it with grumpy faces between cleaning from the elderberries and folding the laundry, at a table spread with the remains of the school day on a food-spattered tablecloth, while waiting for Mommy to get home from work so Daddy could leave for Men’s Group.

What can we say, it was a Monday. It was an absolutely phenomenal soup, anyway, and tasted even better rewarmed on Thursday, after it had a chance to season some more.

Cleaning the fat off the stock then next day was a revelation.

That was the most gelatinous stock we have ever made. Mommy processed it last Thursday and now we have 3 quarts of high-collagen beef stock ready for winter soups.

Soup. It’s what’s for dinner.