Oxtail Soup

Everyone’s depressed and winter’s coming in. I’m not suggesting soup can solve much, but when I go back to Yorkshire I need it in my system to function. A big pan of something on the stove also warms the house up nicely. Coming back home makes me realise how blooming freezing I’ve been all my life; surely everyone ‘wears’ a duvet watching TV at night? Wait, you mean you don’t sleep in a hat?? I’m typing this while wearing a shawl for crying out loud.

But back to my soup. As part of my ‘28th birthday showdown’ last week (aka staying in a National Trust house), I bought a packet of oxtail pieces in my favourite farm shop of all time -yes, I have one- Tebay services on the M6. An emporium of wonders. Knowing I was travelling back to the big smoke that afternoon, I had to choose wisely and ended up with a bit of cheese, some kid meat for a Caribbean style goat curry, and the aforementioned tail. It sounds horrible, I accept that. Who wants to eat a tail? But tails are good. The meat is absolutely delicious once it’s had enough time on the stove- like some of the best stewing steak you ever ate. Dark, rich, sticky; oxtail is rather like a lamb shank. It’s definitely worth a try, either in a winter warmer soup like this, or braised with tomatoes, green olives, basil and a bit of orange zest, served on a bed of polenta…

Ingredients:

To braise the oxtail:

1 oxtail (they usually come bundled up but the one I used was small, around 550g)

1 onion, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

2 beef stock cubes made up in 2 pints water

For the soup itself-1 large handful of each:

diced swede

carrots

potatoes

onion

celery

100g soup mix or pearl barley, soaked and par-boiled

1 teaspoon tomato puree.

1) The night before you make the soup, make sure to soak the pearl barley or soup mix. The following day rinse it and cook according to the instructions, ready to be added in later.

2) You need to cook the oxtail beforehand to ensure the meat is tender; begin by trimming off excess fat, then heat a soup pan and brown the meat in a small amount of oil. Add in the chopped onion and carrot and cook off for a few minutes, before tipping over the 2 pints of beef stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer until the meat is tender and pulls away from the bones- this could be anything from 1 ½-2 ½ hours. For me, it took two hours.

3) When the meat is tender, use a slotted spoon to lift out the pieces onto a plate to cool. Pour the cooking liquor into a large jug and leave to settle for a few minutes, then skim off any excess fat.

4) Meanwhile, put the soup pan back on the heat, add in a spoonful of beef fat and fry off the diced carrots, potatoes, onions and celery. Cook for a few minutes, until the onion begins to turn translucent. Tip in the cooked pearl barley or broth mix and the tomato puree.

5) Cook the soup for 50-70 minutes, until both vegetables and broth mix are tender.

6) Once the meat has cooled, separate the chunks of beef from the fat. It’s a bit of a messy job but oddly pleasing. Roughly chop the meat.

7) Return the meat to the pan and check the soup for seasoning-add lots of black pepper.

Serve with chopped parsley- I would have liked more than is in the picture, but cooking in Yorkshire is a dicey game. This was literally all the parsley we had. Talk about rough living.