We’ve been making beef stock from scratch since the late 90s but this marks the first time we’ve ever built a batch using our trusted friend and ally: the Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker.

We’ve written elegies to this lovely old pot over the years and can’t imagine what our lives would be without it. It’s small, only eight quarts but it is a cornerstone of our kitchen work and is used a minimum of once per week.

If you don’t have 8-12 hours of time to construct a big kettle of homemade stock then this recipe is for you. It takes half that time from start to finish and yields four quarts of pure beef stock that would make a sublime demi-glace.

And the resultant batch would sell for about $100 online.

We were on our weekly walk through Zuppardo’s Supermarket out in Metairie a few weeks ago when we spied a big cellophane packet of beef knuckle bones in the cooler.

We take our inspiration where we find it so we immediately spirited them back to our 9th Ward test kitchen so we could make a nice batch of beef stock.

A Recipe For Pressure Cooker Beef Stock

Ingredients

5lb Bones, beef knuckle

6 oz. tomato paste

Water

Salt (to taste)

Black peppercorns (to taste)

Method

* Roast bones (rubbed with tomato paste) at 300 for 90 minutes in conventional oven

* Remove bones from pan, deglaze pan with one cup boiling water, reserve

* Place bones, peppercorns and salt in 8 quart pressure cooker, add reserved, deglazed broth, fill pressure cooker to top add line with fresh cold water

* Secure lid on pressure cooker

* Turn heat on high, when petcock fully opens, reduce heat to low

* Pressure cook for two hours

* Turn heat off, allow petcock to fully collapse

* Open pot, be careful of the hot steam, strain stock through china cap or colander, reserve, discard bones and pepper

* Voila, you know have approximately four quarts of rich beef stock

Cooking notes

* We smoked these bones over an oak fire for two hours but normally would have roasted them in a common gas oven

* Onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves, thyme and parsley all make fine additions to this stock but we prefer ours to be very plain as it will be incorporated into recipes that are all heavily seasoned with the mentioned ingredients

* If you intend on using these vegetables rub them with oil and place them in the same pan as the beef bones prior to roasting

* Modern onions and carrots are very sweet so be careful how many you use or your stock will by treacly

* We used 2 T. peppercorns and 1.5 T. kosher salt in this recipe

* After a night in the fridge there will a thick layer of fat on your stock, reserve and use as a frying medium

ed note:

* When I would make 40 quart batches at a restaurant I worked at we always rubbed the knuckle bones down with tomato paste. The owner was French and this is the way he was taught. It gives a nice blast of umami to the stock. He also had us use a tub of beef base in the recipe. The analogue to that would be bouillon. Maggi brand is a good one as is Better Than Bouillon

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