Oxtail Soup
Four hours of oxtail reduced to something almost black, thickened by nothing but its own gelatine. The best use of the cheapest cut there is.
Photograph credit: Oxtail soup-93323 by Raimond Spekking · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
What Goes With It
- Crusty bread
- A glass of the sherry
- Nothing rich after
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: English Scones, Crumpets, Air Fryer Jacket Potato.
Making Oxtail Soup, Step by Step
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Dry the oxtail thoroughly and brown it hard in the dripping, in batches, 20 minutes in total. Set it aside.
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Cook the onion, carrot and celery in the same pot 12 minutes, until they take colour.
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Stir in the tomato purée and cook 2 minutes, then add the wine and let it reduce by half.
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Return the oxtail, add the stock, bay, thyme, peppercorns and salt, and bring to a bare simmer.
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Cover and cook 4 hours, until the meat falls from the bone.
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Lift out the oxtail, strip the meat and discard the bones. Strain the liquid and discard the vegetables.
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Chill the strained liquid 8 hours, then lift the set fat off the surface in one piece.
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Reheat the soup with the meat, add the sherry and Worcestershire sauce, and check the seasoning.
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Serve with parsley scattered over.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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A Few Notes
Brown in batches. A crowded pan steams the meat grey.
Four hours. The gelatine only comes in the last one.
Chill it overnight and lift the fat off in a disc.
Storing and Reheating
Refrigerated for 4 days and better on the second. Freezes 3 months.
Common Questions
How long does Oxtail Soup take to make?
25 minutes of preparation and 4 hours of cooking, plus 8 hours of chilling the soup so the fat sets and lifts off, so allow 12 hours 25 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 6.
Oxtail Soup Nutrition
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (most of the energy comes from foods with no recorded source). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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