Homemade Beef Stock

We had a little dinner party at our house a while back, and we tried a lot of new things. The first of which, was making our own beef stock. If you have the time, it's definitely the way to go. You can control the salt content and it's really not that difficult.

Here's what you need:
3 lb. beef bones
3 carrots, cut into 3" pieces
3 celery ribs, cut into 3" pieces
1 large onion, quartered
10 whole peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1/2 bunch parsley
12 cups water

Here's what you do:
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Put your beef bones, carrots, celery and onion in a roasting pan.

Roast the bones for about 30 minutes. You'll know you're ready when they look like this:

Put all of that into a large dutch oven.

Pour about 1/2 cup of water into the bottom of the hot roasting pan. 

Scrape off all the good bits of flavor from the bottom.

Pour that yummy goodness into the stock pot.

Add the parsley, bay leaf and pepper corns. You could also add some fresh thyme if you'd like.

Now cover with the rest of the water.

Bring that to a boil.

Let the stock boil for about 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cover. Leave the lid slightly off to allow some of the steam to escape. 

Let that simmer for at least two hours. Skim the fat off of the top of the stock every half hour or so. You're never going to be able to get all of the fat off, just get what you can. You can cool it down in the fridge and scoop the rest off later. Don't stir the stock though! Just let it simmer away.

Scoop out all of the large pieces from the stock until you just have the liquid. You can season the stock at this point with salt. Or, you can wait until you use the stock later to season. It's really up to you.

Strain the stock into containers for storage. You'll get a few little bits that you'll just want to discard.

At this point, we apparently got distracted and forgot the final picture. We don't have a good excuse.

Enjoy!