One of my favorite off season activities is making the fun stuff... jerky, snack sticks, summer sausages, etc. I will get to each of these shortly so keep an eye out for those posts in the future (I'll be trying some new things specifically with summer sausage to add some variety there), but first I'm going to tackle something new. This year I decided to saddle my friends Doug and Cody with additional weight when we packed out my bull elk by asking them to leave the bones in the quarters so that I could try making elk bone broth or stock. In the past I have made chicken stock by throwing grilled chicken bones into the Instant Pot and running them through a few cycles (see here). My wife uses that stock frequently in her cooking and she really likes having it so naturally I figured it was time to give it a try with bones from a big critter.
I stashed the bones in the freezer until the time was right. The day before Thanksgiving I pulled the bones from the freezer and cut them into smaller chunks with a power saw. In retrospect, the chunks were still pretty big, I probably could have cut them down into even smaller pieces but this ended up working okay.
Then following a recommendation that I saw online I brushed the bones with a light coating of tomato paste.
I roasted the bones in the oven at 425° for 45 minutes.
Here's a word of caution... I did this while my wife was not home, and when she got home she definitely did not appreciate the aroma that lingered in the house. And it still lingers... it's been several days since I roasted the bones and whenever she pre-heats the over the aroma returns. Just be prepared.
The broth that I make is pure 100% bone, I didn't add any other ingredients or seasonings like vegetables or spices. I had to split the bones into two batches, so I filled the Instant Pot with half the bones and then added water to the "Fill Line" of the pot. I then ran 3 cycles in the Instant Pot at the longest time I could set, for whatever reason my wife's Instant Pot maxes out at 1 hour and 39 minutes.
I've learned from experience with making the chicken stock that the best place to run the Instant Pot is the garage... even with chicken the first cycle does not smell very good but over the course of the second and third cycles you get the familiar pleasant broth aroma. This exercise with the elk bones was no different, the smell from the first cycle was enough to make me legitimately question what I was thinking, it was quite unpleasant. But, by the time the third cycle had completed the aroma that filled the garage was that familiar rich broth smell. The end result was about 8 cups (large pickle jar) of beautiful dark stock.
The bones looked like they still had more to give, so I filled the Instant Pot with fresh water and ran the same bones through another 3 cycles to get what the Meat Eater website calls a "Second Stock". This second stock was slightly lighter than the first but still has great color. In the picture below the "First Stock" is on the left and the "Second Stock" is on the right.
I didn't really care to keep the first and second stock separate so during the final straining process when all of the stock was poured through cheesecloth to remove the finest little particulates I ended up just pouring them all into a single big stock pot.
The final product was refrigerated overnight and fat skimmed off the top. Then came the great question... my wife asked, "What am I going to do with 32 cups of stock?" Well, I'm quite certain I don't know, so I decided to simmer it on the range to reduce it. After a couple hours simmering on the stove the broth had reduced quite a bit, the level of the liquid had dropped almost 2 inches in the pot.
I placed the pot in an ice bath to cool the pot overnight and the following day I portioned it out into 1 cup portions for final storage. Final yield was 20 cups and I finally got around to tasting it... it's like drinking a pot roast. I look forward to seeing how my wife uses this in her meal preparation for the family.
I place the cups in the freezer until the broth is solid enough to hold its shape and then vacuum seal in those 1 cup portions then allow it to thaw a bit so that I can lay it flat in the freezer and it freezes in a flat sheet. These store extremely nicely in the basket of my small chest freezer and if clearly labeled my wife can ask even my oblivious and fleet-minded teenage son to go out and grab a bag of whichever flavored stock she needs and he can find it!
