Mixed-Bone Brown Stock

A brown stock made for the braise of the South African pepper steak pie. Beef bones and marrow bones roast first. A freezer mix of chicken carcass and lamb saddle bones goes in for the last 20 min. Tomato paste, onion and celery brown on the trays for the last 10 min. The bones then go into cold water. The stock comes up slowly so the foam can be removed. It holds at a light simmer of 88 to 90 degrees C overnight, with the lid off. The stock has no salt. The braise reduces it, so the salt goes in there. It makes about 3 litres.

Mechanisms

two

The lamb flavour is in the fat

The typical lamb flavour comes mostly from branched-chain fatty acids, such as 4-methyloctanoic acid. These dissolve in fat. They are concentrated in lamb fat and in the marrow.

Three steps keep the lamb in the background:

Cut the visible fat off the lamb bones before they roast.
Roast the lamb for 20 min only. Browned lamb fat tastes stronger.
Remove all of the solid fat cap from the cold stock.

Some of these acids dissolve into the water over 10 h. A small lamb note stays in the stock. The pepper, the merlot and the demi-glace in the braise cover it.

fat trimmed before roasting 20 min roast for the lamb fat cap removed cold

Start the stock cold so the foam can be removed

Bring the stock up from cold water over about 45 min.

The soluble proteins of the bones set slowly as the temperature rises. They join into large grey rafts on the surface, which a ladle can remove.

If the bones go into hot water, these proteins set at once as very small particles. The particles stay in the liquid and the stock is cloudy.

cold water start about 45 min to 88 °C medium-low heat

The method

One recipe

Preparation

Mixed-Bone Brown Stock

The same record, read as a method. This page holds the reasoning; that one holds what to do.

Applied in

one recipe

Recipe

South African Pepper Steak Pie

The South African garage pie, made as individual pies in 120 mm foil tins. Shin cubes and oxtail are dry-brined overnight, browned in the oven and braised for 3 h in a reduced mixed-bone stock, reduced merlot and demi-glace. Shin tendons cook whole in the stock overnight, then go into the filling. The braising liquid chills overnight, loses its fat cap and is reduced until it sets firm. No starch goes in. The filling is portioned into 200 g pucks and frozen. Each pie gets a frozen puck in a puff pastry case, baked on a hot baking steel. The thin foil and the frozen filling keep the base dry with no blind bake. Bake 6 at a time and keep the rest of the pucks frozen. Black pepper goes in twice: on the meat before browning and into the finished filling.

Second revision

References

None yet

No source is recorded for this study yet.