We buy our meat from an eco source – its beautiful beef – free from chemicals and certified organic and biodynamic – straight from the farmer. We get it at our local farmers market – I recommend you do the same! When we placed our most recent order we decided to get bones too – they give for free – I wanted to try making beef stock. And oh my goodness – I am doing this again – it might take a whole day to cook – but you don’t have to stand over it or anything. Just spend a bit of time in the preparation, leave it for 6 hours, then spend a bit more time at the end. What an amazing result!

You will need:
Beef bones
1/2 a celery
2 onions
2 carrots
3 tomatoes and/or a tin of tomatoes
Fennel bulb or fennel leaves
5 bay leaves
Teaspoon of fennel seeds
A few sprigs of thyme and sage or other herbs of your choice
Teaspoon of peppercorns
Water
A big pot
A baking tray

What to do:

Step 1: Place your beef bones – chopped or not, into a baking tray and bake on high for 1 hour – until browned – turn over half way through if you like. Save the rendered fat for cooking later.

Step 2: While the meat is baking, chop your vegetables and fry them in your big pot – add a little butter or fat get them started. Fry until soft and a little golden. Add the herbs, fennel seeds and pepper corn and tinned tomatoes.

Step 3: When the beef bones are browned add them to the pot with the vegies too and cover the whole thing with water. Let simmer slowly for 4-5 hours. Skim the fat off occasionally.

Step 4: After 5 hours – remove the bones from the broth, strain the vegetables out with a sieve. Then strain again with a finer sieve or even a muslin cloth for super clear broth.

Step 5: Leave the broth to sit in the fridge overnight, remove the rest of the hardened fat from the top of the broth (you can keep this and use it to cook with later if you like – its excellent to fry meat). You can now freeze the broth in batches, use it as a base for soups, sauces, stews and casseroles.