Getting some tail will always have a different meaning for me from now on. It’s winter here, and our household is kind of run down, kids have been either home sick or ‘not feeling well’, and people are tired and don’t want to get up in the morning.
This situation calls for some extra nutrition, as well as extra rest and fluids. Bring on the oxtail barley soup!!
Oxtail is actually considered ‘offal’ which is the name that describes the part of animals that are used for food but are not skeletal muscle. I think oxtail is on the fringe of offal (not awful haha) since it does have ‘meat’ and is not an organ. Oxtail is not from an ox but the tail of a cow cut into manageable pieces.
Nevertheless, the oxtail is full of good stuff, especially for those who are run down with cold and flu viruses that are going around. There is a ton of gelatin and the flavor is rich and satisfying. Plus this cut of meat is on the inexpensive side and that always is a good thing!
Tips for a good oxtail soup:
- Skipping the step of roasting the oxtails is fine for a busy day, but you won’t get as rich of a soup. For a weekday put the ingredients in the crock pot before work and you will still have a tasty dinner…
- Soaking the barley is pretty important so don’t skip this step. I soaked/rinsed a bunch at one time and put the extras in the freezer for future soups.
- Adding one fresh/raw ingredient right before serving, or in the bowls themselves is a nice addition, such as parsley, sauerkraut, ginger carrots. A dollop of cultured sour cream is also nice.
- Use whole barley, not ‘pearl’ barley. Pearl barley has part of the grain removed (similar to white rice).
I hope this recipe cures all of your family’s sicknesses this week… be well…
Oxtail Barley Soup
Rating: 3 forks (key)
Shawn will still not eat soup, unless it’s from a can *sigh*
Difficulty:
Easy to medium
Page in NT: 209
Ingredients:
4 pounds fresh oxtail
filtered water
1/2 cup dry white wine [TNC: I used red since I had some in the freezer leftover]
1/4 cup vinegar
2 onions, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, peeled and chopped
fresh thyme sprigs tied together [TNC: rosemary would also be good]
1-2 teaspoons dried green peppercorns, crushed [TNC: I left out, used regular pepper instead]
pinch red pepper flakes [TNC: I left out, did not have on hand]
1 cup barley, roasted in the oven and soaked in 2 TÂ whey for at least 7 hours [TNC: I skipped roasting but did soaking]
sea salt or fish sauce to taste
chopped cilantro or parsley
Place oxtail in a stainless steel baking pan and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 1 hour or until well browned. Transfer oxtail to a stainless steel pot [TNC: I use my Le Creuset dutch oven] and pour out the grease. Add wine and a little filtered water to the baking pan and deglaze by bringing to a rapid boil, while stirring to loosen any coagulated beef juices in the pan. Pour this liquid into the pot and cover all the oxtail with cold water. Add vinegar, bring to a boil and skim. Add thyme, onions, carrots, celery, red pepper flakes and peppercorns. Simmer, covered for at least 24 hours [TNC: you can simmer from morning until dinner, it will be good but not quite as rich tasting].
Remove oxtail and allow to cool. Strain 3 quarts of stock into another pot and add soaked barley. (Reserve any remaining broth for other uses.) Bring to a boil and simmer for about 1 hour or until barley is tender. Meanwhile, pick the meat off the bones and chop finely. When barley is tender, add chopped meat. Season generously. Ladle into individual bowls and garnish with chopped parsley or cilantro.
Photo courtesy of bingozpics on Flickr
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I have been wanting to try this for the longest and JUST found a store that carries oxtail…glad it turned out well for you!
Thanks for the pointers!
Mmm, save the fat you pour out of the roasting pan! I strain it through cheesecloth and keep it in a glass jar in my refrigerator. It’s just wonderful for sauteeing veggies and has lots of good vitamins!
cookinlikecrazy… thanks for reading and great that you found the oxtails! I am going to make this one again SOON even though it will be a duplicate recipe.
Peggy… great idea to strain the fat. Do you do this with fat from making stock too? I always thought that was cooked too much to save…
I have made this recipe with regular soup bones instead of oxtail and it was good.
When I make chicken stock, I always just leave the fat in it–I never really thought about it. Are you concerned about it being too oxidized? I suppose that’s possible, it would be nice to find out.
I just made beef bone stock last week (okay, there were a couple of pork bones in there too!). I used ox-tail also, which I roasted in the oven first. I have to say that it was probably the best broth I’ve ever tasted! I’ve made a TON of chicken broth, but this was so flavorful and, well, beefy! And very gelatinous. Yummy!
With the chicken, sometimes there is quite a bit of fat, so I like to break it off just because it’s so good in other things. I like using it in place of butter to make a roux for chicken gravy. It is really good! But I have just used my nose to tell me what to do. Sometimes the fat didn’t smell right to me so I threw it out.
I usually leave the fat in the stock and add it into what I cook. I made this recipe again last night but spent more time with it. On day one I roasted the bones and put them with water and vinegar in the slow cooker for 24 hours on low. Day two I took the meat off the bones and returned the bones to the cooker. The meat went in the fridge already well chopped. I replaced the displaced water right back up to the top of the crock. Day three I added the veggies and let that cook 10 hours. An hour before dinner I added the barley and meat back in after skimming off 3 quarts of stock. (I have a six-quart cooker.) We had dinner, a quart and a half of leftovers and 3 quarts of rich, gelatinous stock from three packages of oxtail. Such a deal!
Peggy… stop it, you are making me wish that cow’s had more than one tail!!
Just kidding. Seriously though I need to pick up some more of these and make it again with the process you describe. Even though it won’t count toward my total again, it was sooooo good! I’m amazed how EASY some of these things are, you know?
Hey, just wondering how to soak the barley? I picked up pearled barley not knowing that “pearled” meant refined. But I’m going to use it anyway, and I wanted to make this type of soup (I have some beef marrow bones waiting in the freezer). I’ve never made anything with barley before, and I’ve only ever soaked oats (in water with some lemon juice, it didn’t really do much except give the oatmeal a flavor which my husband disliked.) I don’t have much dairy to soak with and I am a bit nervous about getting sick from something sitting out at room temperature in raw dairy
I have the NT cookbook, but we’re still unpacking and I can’t find it! Thank you so much in advance for your help!
I just made this soup, pretty much to the letter though I didn’t roast the barley. I also added two big bunches of watercress as this spring green is very healing for colds (I can’t remember exactly why, but my acupuncturist (who works with Dr. Cowan) suggested it). I poured off the fat from roasting because it there was a lot of it (and I only used 2lbs of oxtail, it’s about a lb per tail it seems).
To Niki: Soaking whole grains for cooking is just putting them in water for at least 7 hours (same for rice, wheat, nuts, beans). The oatmeal really does well with yogurt or whey (that is if you can do dairy). It’s funny I trust raw milk sitting out much more than pasteurized. Raw milk sours at room temp over time (I make cheese from raw milk that has separated from sitting out and butter from raw cream that has sat out) but I don’t know what pasteurized milk does…it has no good microbes to fight off the bad.