Made From Scratch Tuesday 1/3

 Made From Scratch Tuesday is back from the holiday break! I hope everyone had a happy holiday season and is ready for 2012!

One of the things we did over the holidays was pick up our beef. We bought a side of beef from a local producer back in November. After a few weeks hanging time and processing, it was ready for us to pick up last week. We've only bought quarters in the past, so the sheer amount of beef we picked up was almost overwhelming!

One of the other things I like about buying our beef this way, is we get to choose how it's cut and packaged.

More on that on a later post....

Another thing I love about buying our beef like this is all the bones! And bones mean stock! It seems like I never have enough stock in the freezer, so I make trips to the butcher throughout the year to pick up more. Although, they really hooked me up this time. I left with bags and bags of bones. Want to guess what I spent my Saturday doing? Making stock!

I started out with the bones and enough olive oil just to cover the bottom of my 22 qt pressure canner/cooker.

I slightly browned the bones then added 4 large carrots (broke in half), 4 ribs of celery (broke in half), 2 onions (quartered), salt, 1 T whole peppercorns, 4 bay leaves, 2 cloves of garlic, 5 fresh basil leaves, a sprig of rosemary, 1 t thyme, and 1 t savory. Then add enough water to fill the pressure cooker between 1/2 and 2/3 full.

Then, lock on the lid and turn the heat up. When I could hear the steam coming out, I turned the heat down to low and let it cook for 45 minutes. Then turn the heat off, but keep it on the burner and let it cool down. After the pot cooled enough to be able to touch it, I carefully took off the lid to check out my stock.

My stock had a great aroma and a beautiful color. Now the only problem was storing it. As you can see, our freezer had reached its limit. So, I condensed it down by transferring to smaller pots and simmering until most of the water evaporated. This also gave me a good chance to skim off some fat. When it was all said and done, two batches of stock in the pressure cooker was concentrated down to 10 of these little containers, which fit in my freezer perfectly!

Now it's time to link up all of your creations!
Here are the rules:
1. You can link up as many posts as you'd like.
2. The post has to be made from scratch.
3. The post you link up MUST CONTAIN A RECIPE!
4. If you want to put my button somewhere, that'd be cool. You can grab the code for the Made From Scratch Tuesday button on the top right of my sidebar.