My Favorite Soup Stock

            All my life I’ve always truly loved soup. Soup is my comfort food. Whether it was my grandmother’s wonton soup, my mothers chicken noodle, or my babysitter’s chicken tortilla I loved them all. Whenever I’m at a restaurant and the appetizer is either soup or salad I always go with soup! For the twenty years of my life I’ve consumed and appreciated many different kinds of soup. I like to think of my self as soup connoisseur. As I got older and moved into my own kitchen, I began cooking soup myself. I’m not talking about soup in a can. I’m talking about soup from scratch and that means making the stock (broth) as well.

            Stock is the most impart part of a soup. The stock of the soup is like the soil of the plants. With healthy soil you get healthy plants. With tasty stock you get tasty soup. Making the stock from scratch is actually the lengthiest part of the process of soup making (4-5 hours). Over time making soup stocks has become a hobby of mine. This blog will be an overview of how to make beef bone vegetable stock. My all time favorite stock! If you are starving and want to learn how to cook a quick meal you’re reading the wrong blog. My style of soup/stock making is a simple yet long process. In my experience the longer you cook the soup the better it tastes!

Stock Ingredients: beef bones, carrots, celery, onions, thyme, white mushrooms, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I bought the beef bones at the North Beach Farmers Market, which is held every Sunday. The guy selling beef will usually have cheap bones for sale that are perfect for soup stock. The rest of the ingredients can be bought at the farmers markets or other produce stores. I spent about $15-$20 for all my ingredients for this beef bone stock. I cook soup to feed a lot of people.

The first step in this process is to roast the beef bones. Put the beef bones in a saucepan. Rub them down with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Next pre-heat your oven, turn it to 375 degrees, and put the beef bones in the oven for an hour. While your beef bones are roasting cut up your celery, carrots, onions, and mushrooms. No need to cut them too small. Leave the vegetables in large chucks. Once the bones are roasted put them in a large pot full of boiling water. Then add the all the vegetables and thyme to the pot and cook it together at a low heat covered with the pot lid. Now you play the waiting game. It should take 4-5 hours. Check on your pot from time to time and don’t let it boil. Add plenty of salt over time and taste it as it cooks. When it tastes like delicious soup broth, strain out the vegetables and bones and your stock is ready to become a soup. To find out what soup I made with my beef bone vegetable stock you’ll have to wait for my next blog!