Meat jello - aka Glace de Viande

[PitRow]

Glace de Viande is a flavor-packed secret weapon that you can use to boost the flavor of soups, stews, or just about anything where you want deep beefy flavor and luxurious, silky mouthfeel. Basically it's a stock reduced down so that almost all of the moisture is gone and you're left with a beefy gelatinous blob of savory goodness.

Technically this can be done with just about any type of meat/bones but usually it's done with beef. Also this is not typically smoked but this time I decided to start it off in the pellet grill to see what it does.

This is not a technically hard recipe, but it does take a looooong time (3 days) so be prepared.

The bare minimum ingredients are:

5-6 lbs of meaty bones
1-2 onions
2-3 carrots
2-3 stalks of celery (or other aromatics)
Some oil

You can also add things like
Tomatoes
Bay leaves
peppercorns
herbs

Once you've gathered your ingredients, lets get started:

Day 1
Start by preheating the oven/grill to 375 degrees. While that's heating up, brush all the bones with the oil and place in a cooking pan. Once the oven is up to temperature, put the bones in and let cook for one hour.


After 1 hour, reduce the temperature to 350 and add the chopped veggies, making sure to coat them in any rendered fat from the bones.


Allow this to go for another 2 hours (3 total for the bones) or until the veggies are nice and caramelized. I should have let this go a little longer, but I discovered my aluminum pan had a small leak and was losing all the rendered goodness, so I pulled it early.


Once you've taken it out from the oven, remove the solids from the pan and place them in a large pot. Deglaze the pan from the oven with some water and pour that into a separate container from the bones. You want the deglazing liquid in a different container from the solids because in the morning we're going to remove the solidified fat layer on top and if it's mixed in with the solids it's a pain in the butt. Don't ask how I know...


Put both the solids and liquid in the fridge after cooling a bit.

And that's the end of day one (the shortest day).

[PitRow]

Day 2

Start by removing the liquids from the fridge and popping off the solidified fat layer and discarding it. Or you can heat it up to liquify and pour it over your dogs food


If you didn't put the solids in a big pot yesterday, do so now, and pour the liquid gold over it. Then add enough water to cover by a few inches.


At this point you can add any aromatics/optional ingredients you want. I added a small handful of peppercorns and 4 bay leaves.
Bring to a boil and then reduce to a slow boil. Skim any foam that appears every so often, and top up with water as needed to keep the bones covered. Boil for somewhere around 12 hours.

After the 12 hours, remove from heat and again separate the solids from the liquid. You can discard any bones that don't have any marrow left in them at this point.


Once everything is cool enough, put it back in the fridge overnight.

And that's the end of day 2, the longest day

[PitRow]

Day 3
Again, remove the fat cap from the liquid and combine with the solids in a large pot. Make sure there's enough liquid to cover all the bones. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a slow boil. Keep boiling until all the bones are devoid of marrow.


Once that happens, remove all the solids that you can with a slotted spoon, or spider.


Pour the rest through a sieve lined with a few layers of cheesecloth into a smaller pot, or dutch oven


You should be left with a nice deep chocolate color liquid. Bring this to a boil and let it reduce for a couple hours. Once you get down to a couple cups of liquid left, keep an eye on it as it can scorch very easily, you will probably need to reduce the temp as the volume shrinks. At this point the liquid should by nice and viscous and will coat the back of a spoon.

When you get to this stage, you can pour the liquid into a loaf pan, but I like to spoon it into mini muffin tins for easy portioning.


Which ever way you choose, pop it into the fridge for a while so it cools down and solidifies. You'll be left with a nice deep brown jello like substance. If you've used the loaf pan, you can cut it into serving portions, or just pop them from the muffin tins, and freeze them until you need them.


To use them, add them to soups, stews, stir fry, etc. Anywhere you want deep meaty flavor and that silky mouthfeel.

[gmotoman]

Nicely done sir! Homemade Better than bullion.

[SMOKE FREAK]

I bet you could give those as Christmas gifts and folks would be happy

[nickelmore]

very cool idea.

[Richtee]

Not too far off from preparing the Hungarian Koćsonya. Pig feet split and ears, the usual gelatin source. bone/meat left in for picking over out the gel. Mmm. Also, take rib tip scraps (I clean them for sausage fodder) and simmer similarly ( ) and freeze cubes. I make BBQ sauce and a couple other things with that.