Jamie Kennedy's Comments on Basic Beef Stock

Last week, I took Mom, Robin and Aunt Weasie out to the Jamie Kennedy Restaurant for dinner. I had the rib-eye steak for dinner. It was a decent steak, but the sauce which came with it was fantastic. Being the inquisitive guy I am, I decided to ask the chef how he made such a fantastic sauce which lead to the following revalation on stock making. Roast before you render. In retrospect it's so obvious. No wonder my stocks have lacked the flavour and complexity I've wanted. Jamie had a number of other thoughts on the process, but I figure crawl before you walk. I just took a batch of beef bones (say that 3 times fast) with a couple of onions out of the oven (350F convection for about 1.5 hours). Too bad I didn't have any carrots or other root-veggies on hand. I'm gonna let it render overnight and see what it tastes like tomorrow morning. Well, it came out smelling incredible, no surprise. I plucked out the bones and put it through a sieve to get the big stuff then set it on a rolling boil to reduce. I figured that reducing it would take a good 3 or 4 hours, but boy was I wrong. I scorched some of it to the bottom of my stock pot after only about 2 hours on the stove, a real tragedy. Not to mention a real pot-scrubbin workout too. Ah well, I salvaged some of the stock and am looking forward to trying it out next time I make some soup.