Oxtail Soup

1. Season the oxtails with salt and pepper. I’m a brat and like to use sea salt and the fresh-ground stuff.

2. Heat olive oil in a large soup pot or a Le Creuset Dutch oven over medium high heat until it shimmers. Add the oxtails using tongs. Make sure not to crowd them. They’ll spit like crazy, so be careful. Brown on each side, and when they develop a nice fried crust, remove to a plate and repeat until all the meat has been browned.

3. While the meat is browning, chop the veggies. For the onion, I recommend P-dub’s brilliant method. It works great! Slice in half lengthwise, then cut the stalk end off. Peel the inedible brown layers back towards the root end and use that as a handle. Make little vertical slices and then chop crosswise. Chop up the celery, carrots, and garlic/shallot however you prefer. Sometimes I do rings, sometimes I do little quarter pieces.

5. Once the meat is all out of the pot, add the onions
and cook until fragrant and clear. This will not take long so I recommend hovering and stirring quickly.

6. Add the carrots and celery and cook, stirring, for a minute or two. This is where I sprinkle in the Italian herbs, too.

7. Add the garlic/shallots next, and again, cook briefly, mostly to eradicate the “raw” taste. I like to add garlic/shallots at this stage because they seem to burn easily if I add them sooner, which I find gives a strange, chemical taste to the food.

8. Add the oxtails back in at this point, and don’t forget the tasty juices that have accumulated on the plate, too.

9. Pour in the broth, and top off the pot with water. Everything should be submerged.

10. Make a little cheesecloth package with the bay leaf and the peppercorns. In it goes.

11. Let the soup come to a boil, then lower to a rumbling simmer. At this point, we wait. This soup takes a super-long time, because oxtails are not exactly fork-tender right out the gate. It usually takes 2-3 hours plus for them to cook to the consistency we are going for.

12. Once they are all gooey and fork tender and reminiscent of pot roast, remove the oxtails. Pick the meat, discard the bones, chop the meat and return it to the soup.

13. Now it’s time to add the leeks. Cut off the root ends and the green parts of the stalks. You want the 2 or so inches of white stuff. (If you’re enterprising, the green tops are great to freeze for later use in a vegetable stock.) Julienne the white portion and then really rinse them. They love to hide mud and sand in their layers, so don’t be shy. That’s why I wait until they are chopped to bother rinsing, by the way. Then add them to the soup and let the soup simmer for another 30 minutes.

14. Remove the pot to the fridge overnight so you can skim the impressive layer of fat that develops.

15. Reheat and serve.

A few notes: this is obviously time-consuming, but it’s delicious stuff. I saw another recipe on here for oxtail soup. It looks great, but it’s also pretty different. So I thought I would add my special version. I hope you like them both! This is a great dish and a long-time favorite. Thanks!

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