Another of the many Korean soups is ox tail soup. I honestly have no idea who came up with an ox tail soup recipe, but it is incredibly delicious. The recipe is simple as well and doesn’t call for many ingredients that you would never normally use in regular cooking. There is also a recipe for a dipping sauce you would use for the ox. Here is how to make Ox Tail Soup.

Here are the ingredients that you will need. For the ox tail soup, you will need: ox tails(if you can’t find ox tails in an American market, Korean markets will have them for sure), water, ginger, and salt. For the dipping sauce, you will need: soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds, black pepper, spring onions, garlic, and ginger.

First things first, we will need to prepare the ox tails. When you buys ox tails, they will usually be chopped into large chunks already. If not, simple get a large kitchen knife, find the area where the joint is, and cut it at the joints.

Now, grab a pot and add water, ginger and salt along with the ox tails and bring it to a boil. After 5 minutes, drop the heat to a simmer and continue cooking until the ox meat becomes really tender and looks like it will fall off the bone.

While waiting for the ox tail soup to finish cooking, we will work on the dipping sauce for the ox tail. Take the soy sauce, add a little bit of sesame oil, and mix in a bit of the remaining ingredients and mix well. The soup, if cooked without using a pressure cooker, will take a couple of hours so you will have some time to wait. During this time, you can either prepare other dishes for your table or take a little break.

Teach your friends how to make this delicious dish today.

Whenever you make soup, always use soft water and be careful to proportion the quantity of water to that of the meat.  Use a little less than a quart of water per pound of meat -this is a good rule for common soups.   To make richer soups simply use a little less water.

Making the stock that is used in soup is the most important part of the soup making processes.  Generally the soup and stock may be regarded,  as one and the same. Keep in mind, however, that whenever reference is made to the making of soup, this means the making of stock as well.

Before you actually start making the soup, the nature of the ingredients you will be using should be well understood. 

Almost every kind of meat including beef,  lamb, game, veal, poultry and mutton, is used for making soup. When soup stock is made from these meats, they may be cooked separately or as a combination. For instance, mutton used by itself makes for a very strongly flavored soup.  It is not unusual to therefore combine this kind of meat with other meats with a less distinctive flavor. On the other hand, veal alone does not add a strong enough flavor, so it must be combined with other meats such as lamb, fowl, game, or some other stronger flavored meat.

You mat prefer certain cuts of meats to others in the making of soup because of the difference in their texture. The tender cuts of meat do not produce a strong enough flavor.  They are also more expensive!

The tougher cuts of meat, which come from the muscles that the animal uses constantly grows tough and hard, are usually cheaper.  They are also more suitable because they make for the best soup.

The shins, the shanks, the lower part of the round, the neck, the flank, the shoulder, the tail and the brisket are best adapted to soup making. Stock made from one of these cuts will be improved if a small amount of the fat of the meat is cooked with it.   Excess fat that remains after cooking should be carefully removed to avoid soup that is too greasy.

If you are looking for an easy soup recipe, one calling for fish, a white variety should be selected. You may use the head and trimmings, but these alone aren’t sufficient because soup requires some solid pieces of meat. The same is true of meat bones. They are valuable only when they are used with meat.  An equal proportion of meat and bone are required for the best stock.

In another article I shared my chicken soup for the stomach…as well as the soul. Another really tasty and hearty winter lunch is steak & potato soup. So after cleaning up from last week’s celebration of steak and jacket potatoes, I took the leftovers and threw them into the pot and made an excellent homemade version.

So let’s look once more at how this creative cooking matches our Frugal Family core values:

Family first. This night, my three year-old daughter was too tired after dinner to help in the kitchen. Instead I waited until she was snuggled in her bed before finishing this recipe off. But I did manage to involve my mother-in-law, who was very happy to have fresh soup for her lunch at work the next day.

Save money. Again this one is a biggy. Because it is steak and potato, these are always premium products and even the canned versions cost over £1. I made a whole pot that served me and Emily two lunches…and my mother-in-law’s. That is three servings for less than the cost of a single can.

Environmentally friendly. Not only did we re-use our leftover steak and sautéed mushrooms and onions, which meant they did not end up in the council dumpsite. We also re-used an old glass spaghetti jar as a secure storage for my mother-in-law’s lunch.

Healthier. As always, the homemade version allowed us to better control the amounts of salt and sugars added. Of course, it is also preservative free. In the case, we also had the opportunity to reduce the fat content by trimming the leftover steak before adding it to the soup.

So once again a little creative cooking and re-using left-overs allows us to share quality family time, save money, and live greener and healthier lives.

***

So let’s look at what went into this homemade steak and potato soup:

Begin by trimming excess fat from the leftover cooked steak. Then cube the steak; about half-inch squares is an excellent bite size. Toss the meat and any leftover sautéed mushrooms and onions into a pot and cover with water. Bring this to a boil while you cut up one small onion and two large potatoes. Cut according to your family’s taste; small or large chucks. We prefer large. Now add these to the boiling meat. Allow this to simmer until the potatoes are cooked.

To finish the soup off, add about two tablespoons of sour cream/crème freche. Now grate parmesan cheese to taste, but remember that these two ingredients will have the majority of your fats. Of course, they also add a great deal of flavour. One thing I have always found useful was to make a dish to my family’s taste initially and then over time cut back on things like cheese, milk, butter and any of the other worrisome ingredients. Finally add salt and pepper to taste.

And enjoy…

It is no wonder that one of the most popular inspirational book series is called Chicken Soup. Few foods illicit such strong feelings of warmth and comfort. Most of us remember fondly the Campbell Soup commercials of the little boy coming in out of the cold to a piping hot bowl of this magic elixir. And of course, we all have heard of the mythical healing powers in those steaming bowls of chicken soup. So today let’s finish off the last of that Sunday roasted chicken: a few morsels of meat clinging to the thigh and back, the golden crisp skin and not to be forgotten the mineral rich bones.

Before we move into the kitchen, let’s rate this homemade version against the canned variety on our four Frugal Family core values:

Family first. As with other homemade options we have discussed if preparation time were the only measure of this value, then the canned variety would clearly win. But if we include intangibles like sharing the cooking experience and the pleasure of the homemade variety, then this one can be deemed a draw at the very least.

Saving money. Clearly the homemade variety wins in this category. A tin of store brand chicken noodle soup costs about forty-five pence (fifty cents USD) and holds approximately two portions. With my leftover chicken and noodles that were destined for the bin or compost heap and a couple of cups of fresh vegetables costing less than the can, we will make enough to feed four to five people.

Environmentally friendly. Again the homemade option clearly offers the advantage of producing no waste. In fact, it actually consumes food products that would otherwise end up in the bin or in my case partially in the composter. So while the aluminium tin may well be recyclable, the homemade version does better by reducing waste.

Healthier. Besides the obvious fact that the homemade version allows you to better control added salts and sugars, it also offers you the opportunity to alter the recipe to the likes, dislikes, and nutritional needs of your family. Soup is usually one of the main food products that I offer to my post-partum doula clients. It makes an excellent lunch that is both nutritious and delicious…plus since the first two weeks of food is offered as part of my package it is economical too. Of course, boiling the bones for a prolonged period of time as the homemade option does means that those highly valuable micro-nutrients such as iron and calcium leach into the broth. In addition, the most healing property of traditional chicken soup is actually the garlic, natures anti-biotic. Last week, we had nasty colds so I increased this ingredient to half of a head; something more difficult to do with a tin.

So now that we now why we should spend the extra time to make our homemade chicken noodle soup, let’s go into the kitchen and make it.

Begin by boiling all of the leftover chicken bits, including bones and skins; use enough water to cover it all. Add your garlic at this point as well so that it too can infuse with the chicken into a rich broth base. Once you have brought it all to a rolling boil, turn down the heat and allow it to simmer. Remember the longer you boil it the more of those micro-nutrients will get into the soup. This is especially important if you are ill, recovering from an accident, or are pregnant or breastfeeding. Minimum simmering time is approximately half an hour, but two or three hours is perfectly acceptable; just make sure to add more water if necessary. Once you are satisfied, allow this broth to cool. Then pick out the bones and skin. If you are serving small children you may even want to use a colander to drain these out.

Now, using our creative cooking skills, look inside your fridge for vegetables to add. Today I found:

• Celery
• Carrot
• Onion
• Mushrooms
• Sweet peppers
• Broccoli

When working with vegetables, a golden rule is the more colours you can add naturally the more nutritious it will be. This selection I used basically had every colour of the rainbow except blue; but I just did not think that blue berries would taste that good in chicken soup. But a handful for desert would fill out our rainbow of vitamin and minerals. Now bring our broth with those wonderful bits of chicken back to a rolling boil on high heat; add your fresh vegetables and simmer for another half an hour. I happened to have a container of leftover spaghetti from dinner a couple of nights ago. But if you don’t you can add dry pasta and cook until that is done to your taste (my family likes it al-dente). Remember though that for variety or to change the nutritional values, you can also use rice or potatoes.

Now serve it all up piping hot with a smile. While it may have taken several hours from start to finish the amount of prep time is actually less than fifteen minutes; mainly to pick the meat off the bones and sieve the broth and to chop your fresh vegetables. While this makes an excellent light lunch, it can serve as dinner as well by adding a salad and some bread.

Chicken stew is a delicious, warming meal. It is simple to make and you can make a lot of different variations of this tasty dish. Chicken stew actually has a fascinating history and this dish has been enjoyed for many centuries.

A stew is a combination of two or more foods simmered in a liquid. Coq au vin, Hungarian goulash, beef bourguignon, and beef stroganoff are all examples of stews.

The “Apicius de re Coquinaria” is the oldest cookbook ever discovered. It contains fish and lamb stew recipes, although chicken had been domesticated by then too. There were three Romans with that name living between 1 BC and 2 AD and the book is believed to have been compiled by one of them.

You can actually go back even further because primitive tribes used to boil foods together, which is what a stew essentially is. Amazonian tribes uses turtle shells as pans and would boil the turtle entrails with some other ingredients. Other cultures used large shells, such as clamshells, instead of pans. Archeological evidence points to this type of cookery going back seven or eight thousand years. The invention of pottery, about ten thousand years ago, made cooking stews easier.

Fowl such as chicken has been domesticated for thousands of years and chicken stew has been a longstanding popular dish. Different cultures have different chicken stews, such as the peanut butter chicken stew preferred in parts of Africa and the spicy chicken stew made in Morocco.

Chicken Stew Varieties

One type of chicken stew, which is a couple of hundred years old, is chicken booyah. This is like a thick soup or a thin stew and is eaten in northeast Wisconsin. The first Belgian immigrants came to Wisconsin in 1853 and they spoke a language called Walloon, which is nothing like English or French. It is thought that the Belgian wrote down booyah because he did not know how to spell bouillon and the name stuck.

Delicious Southern Chicken Stew

You might have heard of southern chicken stew too and it is still a very popular dish in some states, especially North Carolina. To make this dish, a whole chicken is parboiled in a milk or cream based broth and butter, salt, and pepper are added as well as other ingredients. This stew varies from thin to thick in consistency and from white to yellow in color, depending on the amount of butter or margarine used. Saltine crackers are often served with this dish.

Southern chicken stew is often served in the coolest months of the year and the phrase “chicken stew” can refer to the gathering itself rather than the food. A chicken stew recipe is usually thought of as a comfort food because these recipes are cheap to make, enjoyed by nearly everybody and they are warming and flavorful. This is a common dish served at social gatherings such as church fellowships, family reunions, and community fundraisers.

The chicken stew at these events will often be made in a big cast iron or stainless steel cooking pot, maybe outdoors over an open fire. You might get coleslaw, a grilled cheese sandwich or rice served with the chicken stew.

Before long this cold spell of winter will be departing and the warm air of spring will start to come in. Along with the warmth that the season change will bring we will also see an abundance of lovely little flowers begin to pop up on our lawn and yards. These yellow spots are nothing more then small dandelion plants.

The dandelion is a perennial plant that is generally considered a nuisance and a pest. Many home owners attack the plants with a vengeance spraying plant killer on each and every one they see. These herbaceous plants have long, lance-shaped leaves from which it derives its French name of Dent-de-lion which means lion’s tooth. Its leaves are generally about three to twelve inches long and approximately 1/2 to 2-1/2 inches wide.

The plant has multiple uses such as the beautiful yellow flowers make some excellent dandelion wine while you can create some flavorful salads with the greens. The dandelion leaves are usually at their best when you sow them young. Get them as they first emerge. The nice thing about dandelions is that there is no chance what-so-ever of confusing it with another plant. There simply are no poisonous look a like that resemble the dandelion.

Although most of the people generally like to discourage the growth of the dandelion the plants were actually introduced into the Midwest from Europe in order to provide food for cultured honeybees during the early springtime. From this humble start the dandelion has now spread worldwide. As mentioned most gardeners tend to detest these pretty yellow flowers and due to its deep taproot the more they try to weed them out the faster they tend to grow.

If you plan to use dandelions as a food supplement you should collect your dandelion leaves in the early spring months. This is the time of the year when they are the tastiest. Be sure to grab them prior to the flower appearing on the stems. You can harvest your wild crop again in the late fall. To eat these broad leaves you should select only the youngest of the plants and above all avoid those with flowers as these are the bitterest of the bunch. Some true dandelions fans will eat the greens from early spring on up to the late fall months. If all else fails you can always boil the bitterness out of the leaves.

Dandelion greens are traditionally eaten in salads or sautéed or even steamed. They often display a chicory type of taste with a little bit of bitter tinge. Today most people do not care for the bitter taste of the dandelions however in past years the people had developed the ability to distinguish between a good and a bad bitter taste. We are now accustomed to the added sugar and salts in our foods and can not readily do this today.

One simple way to prepare the dandelion is to sauté them for approximately 20 minutes with some onions and a pinch of garlic. Use olive oil and as they cook you may add some wine to the pan just before they are completed their cooking cycle. They can be cooked with some sliced carrots to cut any of the bitterness from the plants.

Most of the plant is useable. You can eat the leaves and the flowers, you can use the flowers to create wine and you can dry the root and grind it to create a coffee like drink. I will cover the coffee drink in another article. As a final added attraction I would like to describe how to make some Cream of Dandelion soup.

Ingredients

4 cups of chopped dandelion greens

2 cups of yellow dandelion petals

2 cups of dandelion buds

1 Tablespoon of butter

1 cup of chopped wild leek

6 cloves of minced garlic

4 cups of water

2 cups of heavy cream

2 teaspoons of salt

To start you will need to gently boil the dandelion leaves in six cups of water. After a while pour off the bitter water and boil a second time. Once again pour off the bitter water.

In a large soup pot sauté the wild leek and the garlic in the butter until it becomes tender. Now add the four cups of water. Next place the dandelion leaves, petals and buds into the mixture. Add salt to your liking and simmer gently for approximately 45 minutes.

Finally add the cream and continue to simmer for a few minutes more. Upon serving you can garnish your soup with some dandelion flower petals. There you have it and I certainly hope that you enjoy this soup.