Oxtail Soup
February 25th, 2007 by Scott |
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“What are you having for dinner?” asked my friend at work. “Oxtail Soup” I replied. “Oh, nice! How do you make that?” he asked. “With Oxtails” was my rather obvious answer. “Eeurgh – that’s disgusting!” was his response.
I’m sure people are so used to their meat coming pre-packaged in little trays (sometimes with a complimentary sanitary towel beneath to remove the blood) that they don’t even know it comes from animals. Well here’s a secret…MEAT IS FROM DEAD ANIMALS!
The sooner people realise that, maybe they won’t be so adverse to eating oxtail, offal, and all the other goodies that are usually cast aside in favour of a more “presentable” fillet steak. Let’s step back a little, and start using our heads a little, shall we? I’ve more respect for a vegetarian then a hypocritical carnivore.
Anyway, this soup is delicious and should convert almost anybody. I serve it chunky, with the vegetables intact and even with a large chunk of oxtail in the middle of the bowl so that the meat can be enjoyed too. But you could just as easily strain it to remove the “solids” for a more liquidy lunch.
Oxtail Soup Recipe – Ingredients
- 1/2 an Oxtail (about 5 chunks – like in the picture above)
- 1 Onion (Halfed and cut into strips)
- 1 Carrot (Diced)
- 1 Celery Stick (Cut into slices 2cm or so thick)
- 1 Bay Leaf
- 2 Tbsp Tomato Puree
- Handful of Pasta Tubes
- 1 Litre Beef Stock
Oxtail Soup Recipe – Method
- Put oxtail in a pan of water and bring to the boil, removing any “scum” from the surface. Remove and dry.
- Coat oxtail in seasoned flour. Fry in a pan with a little butter to just brown the outsides, then remove and place to one side.
- Add onion, carrot and celery to the pan. Stir and allow to sweat for 5 minutes approximately.
- Add the ox-tail back to the pan. Pour in the beef stock and add the tomato puree and bay leaf. Stir well.
- On with the lid and into an oven at 150 degrees c for approximately 3 hours.
- Add the pasta for the last 15 minutes of cooking time.
- Remove and taste (carefully! It’s hot!, adding salt and pepper as appropriate.
You’re all done. Remove and serve in bowls while still hot, with a chunk of ox-tail in each bowl if desired. If you like, you can strain the soup at this stage, too. Accompany with some crusty bread, and enjoy!
Filed under: Meat & Fish, Soups & Sauces.
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Meat comes from a WHAT!?!?!?
When we first moved to Andorra we had a choice of buying rabbits skinned or unskinned….honest! I draw the line at skinning my own food. I also make the fishmonger clean the fish….
I must admit – I am not a very adventurous eater, although I am trying! Blogging helps. And, you do offer a wonderful recipe here… I don’t want to be a hypocritical carnivore!
Just the kind of dish that my brother likes. We bought him a slow cooker as one of his Christmas presents so he can cook meals like this while out at work. I’ll flag the recipe to him. Dad tells me that when he was young you could get oxtail and pork belly almost given away by butchers. Now they are considered yuppie food and sell for top prices. Strange.
I’ve seen oxtail on sale here few times, and the price is really reasonable compared to what I remember from Scotland. I must admit I haven’t made oxtail soup myself yet, but the intention is definitely there. I’ve bookmarked your recipe, and will report back if I make it:)
I “heart” oxtail…I mean, oxtail soup in Hawaii is a must!
I only wish that it were easier to find oxtails here…they’re used in a roman dish but for the life of me my butcher either sells them out by the time I get there or oxtails aren’t as popular with the milanese as they are with the romans!
Oooh, I’m a big fan of oxtail, though I’ve never had it in any non-Korean dishes! Methinks I should rectify this situation…
Oxtail. I never had it but the soup sounds good.
It’s in the name. I know what you mean about people getting disgusted by other body parts other than what they are fimiliar with…. maybe we should call the tail something else… like oxtailion. Sounds a little more mystical.
All the best,
Monika
Katie: I don’t really fancy pulling the skin from a rabbit either! I’m happy to play with fish guts, though. Perhaps not quite literally “play”, but you see my point
Chris: I love experimenting. I don’t think I’d ever try insects though. Yuk!
Trig: Maybe down south. Up here, offal is cheap cheap cheap. Dinner for less than a quid!
Pille: You should make time – it’s very very easy really!
rowena: Butchers selling out is easy to resolve – ask him to keep some for you. Most butchers are surprisingly good at that – and this is in miserable old England – I’m sure you’d have it even better.
Ellie: It’s great to see how different countries handle different meats. Kidneys for example are prepared much different in “Eastern” cuisine to England…
Monika Korngut: You’re perhaps right. People are put off by a name and it’s connotations as much as anything else. Wonder why noone eats Mutton these days?
I really do think that people are so removed from the sources of their meat and food in general… meat does come from animals, darn it! I admire people who make an effort to truly know and appreciate their food- makes for a healthier life in all respects.
bazu: Excellent wording. I’m sure people wouldn’t think the same about battery chickens if they had to see them before they kill and eat them!
I’ll have to enjoy this one from a distance (I’ve been a vegetarian for over 16 years). I think that people should be informed about what they consume, then do what works for them.
Susan from Food “Blogga”: Absolutely. If meat doesn’t float your boat, I’ve the utmost respect for you (and I love well thought out dishes without meat anyway!). Someone else pointed out that we eat far too much meat these days (for a carnivore a meal isn’t a meal without it), and this is the wrong way to go.
The first time I had oxtail soup was with my Spanish friend who said she grew up eating this. I have since eaten oxtail braised, in soups, stews etc. & find the flavor hearty & delicious. Cheers!
The Culinary Chase: It’s certainly a lot more popular in other countries. In England it’s very popular canned – but not “fresh”. Strange!
This makes a great companion piece to my oxtail stew post last month
I adore the unctuous gooeyness of oxtail – all that slow release of the gelatine in the cartilage, or something… It’s one of my all-time favourite foods which is saying a lot as I seldom eat loads of red meat.
I have often said that if you want to eat meat and not be a hypocrite to some degree, you should really only eat what you could kill and clean yourself. This criterion would put red meat right off the menu as I very much doubt I could kill a mammal. Poultry would be a possibility and I could probably handle fish without too many problems (my issue with fish is more the smell in my kitchen that the actual yukkiness!) – I am not one of those people that is squeamish about a fish’s eye staring at you while you eat
Failing this very strict approach, I think everyone should pay more attention to the provenance of their meat and other animal products. If the market for battery hens dried up, the businesses that supply them would go under (hurrah!) – so it really is up to us, the consumers, to take off our blinkers and be more aware of where animal products come from, and then demand that the animals in question are treated properly and killed humanely. By turning a blind eye to the source of our food and obsessing about price , we are merely perpetuating the cycle of animal cruelty.
Btw, you’ve been tagged!
http://cooksister.typepad.com/cook_sister/2007/03/5_things_you_do.html
I made a delicious Spanish Oxtail stew last year and my mum thought it was a bit too fatty for her. I loved it! It gives such a rich flavour and gelatinous texture that it’s really great in stews. I find it to be quite cheap down here (in Essex). I think a lot of people don’t know what to do with it.
Freya: There seems to be regional variations in the price of oxtail and other offal. I guess it depends how “trendy” it’s considered in your location.
Jeanne: Your comment was grabbed by my spam filter (Askimet) – oops! Sorry about that!
Great comment though, and absolutely true. We can’t complain about battery hens and keep buying them. The whole way an economic market works is based on how it reacts to customer demand – and right now, we’re demanding cheap chickens regardless of the welfare costs. Without changing this, it won’t stop.
Scott, well said. I agree with you completely.
I like a bowl of oxtail soup occasionally but never attempted to make it from scratch. When i lived in Kingston, Surrey, just over the bridge towards Hampton Court, there was a bakery which sold home-made oxtail soup. I can still remember to this day how good it tasted. I was one of their regulars.
There is a Filipino recipe that uses oxtail too called Kare-Kare. Which, i’ve been meaning to cook for ages and ages. I’ll add your recipe to my to do list.
Mae: Great, it would be lovely to see how it works out for you. Feel free to vary the ingredients however you see fit – add your own identity to it.
If we are going to choose to eat meat, I think it best to utilize as much of the animal as possible so that the animal’s death will not have been in half-hearted vain. Having said that, one man’s meat, is another’s taboo. There’s quite a food fight on another blog over rabbit ears. You may have already seen it or weighed in. I just left the site reeling. Talk about tripping wires. I like an animated discussion and debate, but for the most part this was a powder keg.
Susan: I’d not heard about the Rabbit Ears thing, but have put in my 2 cents worth now. I’m not 100% sure whether I’d fancy them myself, but would certainly try them. Thanks for that info!
Yet another offal observation. I don’t know how it is in Europe, but in the U.S. it is very hard to find these “cheap” and therefore considered inferior cuts of meat. Occasionally, I will see oxtail and tripe, but there was a time when you could buy a package of chicken hearts or other innards as pretty standard. Now you can’t even find a heart in the giblet package insert in the whole roaster that you’ve bought, and whatever is in there probably doesn’t even belong to that particular bird. I suspect these “lesser delicacies” wind up being used as the by-products so labeled on pet food. Perhaps they are not quite so wasted as we think.
As my dad used to say “the only part of a hog we don’t use is the Oink”. Being brought up on a farm in the late 40’s and 50’s we grew and raised 90% of what we ate, nothing was wasted. Beef tongue was a delicacy as were the tails. I am amazed at the exorbiant price these 2 items command now days. I now work in the middle east and find many of the food items we ate on the farm on the menu here in Kuwait.
Ray: I’m on holiday right now in Poland, and while it isn’t the most exotic of place it’s still a lot closer to how food “should” be. Buy a chicken at a market and get all the giblets in place plus the blood in a little bottle too, to use how you see fit. I can only guess that this stuff just goes to make sausages and / or cat food in the UK.
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Scott, I am so excited to have found this recipe in your archives! The local butcher here had some lovely ox tails chunks that I couldn’t resist. Problem is though I remember fondly enjoying oxtail soup in my childhood and somewhat more recently having lovely braised oxtail at a nearby braiserrie, I honestly don’t know how to cook these.
Thanks for this one!
Hi Teresa, well you’re in for a treat with ox-tail, it is delicious. You just need to remember to remove the “scum” which rises to the surface when cooking, but that’s not hard work at all.
Let me know how it turns out!