Beef and Bones

Earlier this month I bought 5 pounds of beef bones (a little over $8) and 3.2 pounds of bottom round roast (2 separate chunks) for a little less than $6.50, and two pounds of hamburger. I want to let you know what I have done so far with the bones and the roasts, about $14-$15 worth.  Unless you are trying to figure out for yourself how far you can stretch this particular combination of food, you may find this post excruciatingly dull.

I bought it at Sinnett's Market on Commerce, where the butcher assures me that all the beef is free of hormones and antibiotics. Some of it (the more expensive St. Helen's beef) is from the Northwest...but none of it is grass-fed and grass-finished. It's all feed-lot grain-finished.  But the butchers are quite willing to answer questions, and if you ask for things that available in the back that aren't up front yet, like soup bones, they are willing to get them out for you. One day one of the guys even mixed up some breakfast sausage for me when they were out of the sausage they usually have in the case.

I used the bones for bone broth. Yesterday I got the bottom round out and started thawing it.

I took some of the broth, put it on the stove, and added diced potatoes, onions and celery. When the vegetables were almost done, I took the beef and sliced it as thinly as I could. I was trying for paper-thin slices, but neither my knife nor my skill is really adequate. I mostly got slices about as thick as a quarter. I added them to the soup and cooked just until done.

They were a little too chewy -- I have a memory, a powerful visual, kinesthetic and taste memory, of slices of beef cooked in broth just before serving that were wonderfully flavored and meltingly tender.  That's the vision I had cooking them. They didn't come out that way.

I'm not sure where the memory came from -- it may have been beef sukuyaki prepared by a skilled cook right at our table in our hotel room in a family meal in Japan, when I was eight or nine. Except I think she prepared the version of sukiyaki where the meat is cooked on a little domed grill, then added to the broth and noodles and vegetables.

Or maybe from a Mongolian Grill restaurant? Or a Chinese restaurant?

This beef did have one advantage over chunks of stew meat that have been braised and cooked for a long time -- it had more flavor --  but not the tenderness.

Then I took the rest of that chunk and sliced it with the grain and marinated it for jerky. I looked at several recipes online, ranging from simple (salt and pepper) to complex (mostly versions of teriyaki). I made up my own, adding salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, sucanat (or was it rapadura?), and sea salt.

Then I took the second big chunk of bottom round, rubbed it all over with salt, and set it in the frig alongside the jerky to sit overnight.

Tonight I cooked the little roast at 250 for 2 hours and 500 for 10 minutes, and let it sit for 20 min while I boiled potatoes. It came out just a little bit pink.

The directions I was following (sort of) said to cook it at 200 until it reached 118, then remove, wrap in foil, turn the oven up to 500, and cook until it reaches 128 (for very rare). Mine went up to 140 and was just barely rare.

I realized when I reached for the meat thermometer that I was ill-equipped. Not only do I not have one of those fancy-schmancy meat thermometers that can sit in the roast for the entire cooking time, but the lowest number on it was 140: my desired end temp.

Most of the thin slices were acceptable tender. Not meltingly, mind-numblingly tender, but OK. Quite edible. The occasional tougher gristly bits were nasty, which I suppose is why bottom round is $2.18 a pound and tenderloin is $20.

At any rate: for about $14 for the bones and roasts, we have had:

• about a half-gallon of broth (most of it still in freezer)
• a nice beef vegetable soup for dinner 
• leftover beef vegetable soup -- 2 work lunches put away in frig
• open-face roast-beef sandwiches (beef, bread, potatoes, gravy over all)
• enough leftover sliced roast beef for sandwiches (hmmm....au jus with some broth? but the broth is frozen solid in a huge chunk)
• 10 oz of raw beef sliced and drying into jerky -- I probably have it sliced too thickly -- I'll know tomorrow

[Update: the jerky is good! It is a little too thick but very tasty, just enough pepper for my taste. I was afraid the vinegar might be overwhelming, but it wasn't. I am not sure it will last long enough for my son to do a taste test! Next time I try it, I will be quite willing to slice up a whole roast into jerky.]

I'm trying to decide what to do with the rest of beef broth. It falls short of "awesome," but it came out pretty good.  Whatever it is needs to be something that will use about 6 or 7 cups.

I'm thinking chili. Beans, some ground beef, spices. A really big pot, dinner plus 2 or 3 school/work lunches.

I would really like to try a French onion soup. But there's the kid problem. "I'm just not really that crazy about French onion soup."

He said that even when he made the soup himself (as a French class project) and everyone in the family said it was the best French onion soup they ever had -- and my dad said it was the best French onion soup he had eaten since he was in Saigon during the Vietnam war (I bet they made it with bone broth instead of canned broth).

And there's still fat on top of the broth too. I could fry some potatoes in it! Or onions.

At any rate, it's a lot more food that I got out of the $14 I spent on take & bake pizza last weekend.

Blog hops/carnivals: this post is entered in Pennywise Platter Thursday and Simple Lives Thursday.