Beef cuts for soup/stock/jus

[MelissaH]

I've been using beef shank slices in my Instant Pot. My butcher cuts them about an inch thick. I did a beef stock with three of them, carrot, celery, onion, a squirt of tomato paste, etc., 75 minutes on high pressure and then natural cooling, which turned out wonderfully gelatinous. And then yesterday, I did a batch of soup: a shank, onion, celery, mushrooms, thyme, and barley, high pressure for 40 minutes, natural release. The meat after the stock was pretty tasteless, and fell completely off the bone. The marrow was also gone from the hollow of the bone, presumably in the stock. But in my soup, the meat was still mostly attached to the bone and I pulled it out as a single unit. I tasted the meat and found that it still had flavor so I shredded it off the bone (which was easy to do) and returned it to the soup.

[Franci]

That is what I use beef shank meat and roasted meat bones that I save in the freezer, plus some un roasted knees frozen. Then I soak the marrow in salted water in the fridge. That gets added only at the very end so that I can enjoy it and gives a cleaner taste and doesn't get lost, dissolving in the stock

 

 

[Katie Meadow]

I served the soup with fresh Chinese wheat noodles and Choi sum. There were four of us, and the consensus was that parts of the meat were tender and other parts were tough and unappealing; and that would be parts of the same slice. So my takeaway is to try beef shanks from another source and see if I can get better quality. The recipe said to simmer for 2 hrs, and I actually added an extra 15 or 20 minutes. I don't really think that the tough parts of the meat would have gotten any better for more cooking--there was a lot of gristle and fiber threaded through it. I would have been very happy just having the broth with the noodles and greens, but not all meat-eaters agree, especially not my husband and nephew.  

 

Franci, that photo looks scrumptious. And your treatment of the marrow is great. My mother used to pull the marrow out of the bone after it cooked for an hour or so and eat it spread on fresh rye bread with a sprinkle of salt. Sometimes she shared, sometimes not!

[gdenby]

I agree w. the above. Most likely the shanks were not cook long or hot enough.

Pressure cookers are the way to go for stocks.

Considering the broth was good, try a manual fix. Use your fingers to pick the meat off. Anything that resists, save for the next round of stock making.

Most of the plate short rib meat ends up tender. Most of the chuck short ribs are harder to get tender.

If you can find beef neck bones, those work well. Lots of collagen to turn to gel, and the meat, what little there is, is medium tender.

[ChocoMom]

The beef shanks, since they come from the leg muscle area, tend to be kind of tough and chewy- just because that muscle gets so much use. Beef from a younger animal (less than a yr) will yield something slightly better. But, either way, the shanks tend to need a longer cook time, with moist heat. 

To help eliminate the usual toughness, I add in a couple splashes of apple cider vinegar while thawing the meat and cooking.

I do use soup bones when doing large batches of stock for freezing. If I've budgeted enough time, I can cook them long and slow, and get all that beefy goodness out that's packed inside. Amazing amounts of collagen in there, too.

For the days I'm short on time, well, I cheat.  I grab a couple chuck steaks out of the freezer, toss them in the slow cooker with water, salt and a splash of apple cider vinegar.  in a few hours, its cooked enough so that I can cut it all up to add to my 'veggistrone' soup. Its so tender, its almost unbelievable.

[pufin3]

It also depends which part of the shank is being cooked.

The top of the shank where the 'osso bucco' sized cuts are found, ( not from a veal calf just size-wise) are going to be more tender than the slices closer to the foot. For those, as already mentioned, a pressure cooker is helpful.

[huiray]

On 1/27/2016 at 7:29 PM, Katie Meadow said:

The recipe calls for boneless beef shank. The only shank meat I could get was cut in 1 1/2 inch thick slices through the bone, but I figured, how could adding the bone with marrow not be a good thing? I cut the meat into a few pieces, as the recipe suggested and proceeded to make the soup base as directed. The broth is fantastic! Really rich, flavorful, perfect. 

 

However, the shank meat after 2 hours at a low simmer is nothing to write home about. Parts of it aren't bad, but parts of it are very tough and gristly. Not exactly fall off the bone tender and not what I would hope for since the recipe calls for the beef added to the soup along with noodles and greens.

 

On 1/27/2016 at 10:30 PM, huiray said:

Perhaps all you need is to up the temp of your simmering broth a few degrees. Two hours with bone-in shanks for me is sufficient to get tender, decently gelatinous meat, with a "simmer" where the bubbling is fairly pronounced but is NOT at a boil. One can also get boneless shanks a.k.a. "shins" from Chinese grocers (this is commonly found in my local Chinese/Vietnamese places, for instance). Sliced up, these cook up nicely in two hours also; in fact, going much more beyond that just makes them fall apart into bits and pieces.

 

Here are two beef shins I used for a braise w/ bamboo shoots & stuff:

The shins a.k.a. boneless shanks came from my usual Chinese grocery.

 

I did, in fact, unintentionally leave the braise (stove-top) going for longer than I intended this time - about 3+ hours --- and all the shin rounds were well along in disintegrating into bits and pieces.  See here (in the dinner topic) for more details on the dish.

[pufin3]

The beef bones in 'Pho' are roasted then simmered for up to twelve hours along with ox tail/shank, whatever pieces of bone and meat cuts are the cheapest.

[huiray]

With or without the 飛水 treatment, in your view?

[Katie Meadow]

Am I correct in assuming that whatever meat on the bones used to make a Pho broth is not worth eating after 12 hours?

 

And by the way, thanks to all who made suggestions. I have a plan for next time I make the Lucky Peach beef soup, incorporating many of them. 

[Franci]

I don't see why to leave any meat to cook for 12 hours. I see the point for large beef bones but not the meat. I would always take the meat off the bone and add later for a richer and cleaner flavor.