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I’m slowly working towards some simplicity within the home, but hey! It’s a lot of hard work!

I love having a go at growing my own veges and always use herbs fresh from my garden. I try to plant from seed whenever I can and have learnt to save and share my own seed for the following year. I make Award Winning preserves and pickles; and my husband brews Award Winning boutique beers as well. I love to stockpile and try to limit quick trips to the shops. I dabble in bread making and enjoy making my own stocks too.

I enjoy feeding my family good hearty meals, nothing like those tiny restaurant stacks you have to look for on the plate. My husband maintains our vehicles and machinery and we both enjoy fabricating on a small scale mostly relying on metal & timber recyclers for any materials needed.


While I don’t always have time to reply to comments, I love reading them. I hope you enjoy your stay and I hope you learn something new because I love sharing what I learn, and I'm always looking for another new skill myself.

Cheers!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Beef-Tail (Experiment 2)


By now, you would know I am conducting a few experiments, preparing for when I receive my lovely locally grown, grass fed Pure Angus beef....Yep, I ordered a full beast...But I need to know what if any of the organs I shall keep....I have already blogged about the Tongue....and it is delicious......Next on the list of experiments is the Tail....... you read my last post, you will know that we are planning to buy a whole beast which is locally grown, grass fed pure black Angus....It doesn't get much better than that...unless we were able to raise it ourselves.


Ox-Tail soup...... 
I had the ox tails (2) cut up by the butcher....and I braised them on the stove after tossing in herbed flour....I then put them in the crock-pot to slowly cook for a few hours.....

Meat from two ox-tails

Braising the meat

Into the crock-pot
I left the meat in the pot overnight from pure exhaustion on my behalf...(I had turned the crock-pot off at the wall).
Returning to it the following morning....I set to work on removing the meat from the bones, and around the fatty tendons Reserving the stock, I had a good base for the soup.


There was a considerable amount of fat and jelly around the meat once removed, so I poured boiling water over the gathered meat to bring the fat to the top, and strained it...after doing this twice I was satisfied with the amount of fat I had removed....Confident that I had kept the flavour within the stock I had saved, I wasn't concerned about 'rinsing' the meat.
After having so many things on the go yesterday, I never got around to cutting more veg for the soup....but I did add lentils, barley and the carrots from the crock-pot.
This soup is delicious, but I do prefer to have lots of different veg in a soup...just a personal preference....so I will freeze a few serves as a base for making a quick Vegetable & Ox-tail Soup...But most of it will be our soup for the week.

Conclusion: Preparing this meat was no more trouble than separating the meat off a few slow cooked chicken carcass's to go into a soup..and I do that on a regular basis for stocks anyway. I plan to ask the butcher to keep the tail for me as well.......


Would you eat the tail? How would you cook it? 

8 comments:

  1. OK- Tail I can do, have eating. As, kids we also kept the tail of slaughtered pigs. Looks good .

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  2. My Nanna always added shin beef to the oxtail when cooking so I do that too. Barley is soaked overnight to remove phytates and added to the usual veg - celery, carrots, onions, tomatoes, parsnips and turnip. The stock is left overnight in the fridge and skimmed rather than rinsed.

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  3. Love ox tail here too. I usually cook my in the slow cooker but eat it as a stew, nothing better than sucking the meat from the bones. YUM.

    cheers Kate

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  4. Kids and Canning Jars: Ahh I found one you like...I wouldn't think there would be much meat on a pig tail would there?

    Susan: Oh good idea ...I will add the shin to the tail meat too...as from one beast I suppose there won't be that much to make a full meal.....Yes, I rinsed the meat, but kept the stock aside too.

    Simplelife: Oh,I'm not partial to sucking the meat from the bones, Mum is, but I find this lot was too greasy anyway.

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  5. It'd probably go well in an osso bucco. Yum!

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  6. YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMy

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  7. Just seen this post, I cook oxtail with a good dash of vinegar, bay leaves, as a main meat dish with rice. brown the tail add chucky diced onions, add a few small bayleaves, cover with water/cube of stock if you want (opp)add a dash of vinegar. cook on med until the waters gone, add more water and a little more vinegar it takes a good 3 hrs to cook it that the meat falls off the bone. add a little salt,I add chunky cut up carrots and potatoes the last 1/2 hr don't want them to fall apart. Add a little water to 2 tablespoons of gravy powder in a cup and mix that into the meat just for that extra gravy season with ground black pepper and salt

    Rina www.pumpkinpatchgarden.blogspot.com

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