Hearty Winter Oxtail Soup

Hearty Winter Oxtail Soup

This oxtail soup left me feeling well satisfied after dinner the other night.  I’m sure you know the feeling of finishing a meal and wanting to reach for something sweet, like a piece of dark chocolate or berries and cream. I think it’s the body’s way of telling us it needs some immediate energy to aid digestion of a more difficult to digest meal. Well upon finishing my oxtail soup, I felt none of this at all! I felt completely satisfied, no feeling or want for anything else.  Many of you will know that a slow cooked, collagen rich meal is highly digestible, easy on the gut and has wonderful health properties.

So, I was therefore most pleased that there were leftovers for lunch yesterday!

This is how I went about my oxtail soup.  It begins with making a broth, from which I just rolled straight into the next stage. Increase the quantities for a larger batch.

INGREDIENTS

Broth

  • 1 onion
  • 2 carrot
  • 2 stalks celery
  • 1.5 litres water
  • 1 oxtail
  • Thyme
  • 1 Bay leaf

Soup

  • 1 leek
  • 1 onion
  • 2 cloves finely diced garlic (or crushed)
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 desiree (pink) potato
  • Parsley
  • 1 cup red wine
  • Broth from first step
  • Salt, pepper
  • Freshly chopped Italian parsley

METHOD

Take a large pot, add a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and bring to a medium to high stove top heat. Add the oxtail and brown. Add the water, carrot, celery, onion, (broth quantities above) bay leaf and thyme to the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer.  Allow to simmer for at least 4 hours to allow the collagen to break down and to get the most from the bones. Skim off any froth on top as it cooks. (You can go through the usual full broth making process as I describe here if you like, but in the case of this oxtail soup, I short cut it and still achieved goodness and flavour). You may need to top up your water levels during the cooking time.

After 4 hours, remove the carrot, celery and onion with a slotted spoon and discard. Remove the tail bones (with meat) and retain in a bowl. Let the broth sit off the heat for a short while.  Depending on how fatty the tail was, you may have a layer of fat on top of your broth.  Spoon some fat off to leave a broth that you’re happy with – you want to leave some fat. You could add some ice cubes to cool it a little more quickly and more easily remove the fat off.

Take the same pot, add some of this fat and return to the heat on a medium/high heat. Add freshly chopped carrot, leek, onion, potato and garlic.  Stir until the onion is softened. Add the red wine to the pan, stir.  Return the broth to this pot along with the meaty tail bones and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until the potato is soft.  (You can remove the meat from the bones and just add the meat back in if you would prefer to serve it this way). I like to serve with the bones, to see where all the goodness comes from.

Ladle into bowls and serve topped with freshly chopped parsley.

Oxtails can be added to our hampers as an extra and of course there’s only so many to go around.  Using a diced chuck steak for the meat, with a broth made from bones would be a great alternative.  You can see our hamper choices here.

Enjoy,

Kirrily x