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Old 06-01-2020, 04:16 PM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
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Location: East Tennessee, USA
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Default Portable Soup

This is a form of dehydrated soup that is a precursor of meat extract and bouillon cubes. It is also known as pocket soup or veal glew. Long a staple of seamen and explorers, it would keep for many months or even years. Within this context, it was a filling and nutritious dish.

This recipe will produce sufficient to reconstitute into four generous bowls of soup. Please note that salt is not added during the preparation state, as this will make it difficult to dry the concentrate properly and invite deterioration. Salt is not added until the soup has been reconstituted for immediate eating. Do not be tempted to use a different cut of beef, as shin has generous quantities of the connective tissue which breaks down into jelly.

Ingredients:

3lbs (1.5kg) of beef shin meat, cut into chunks about 1 inch (2-3cm) square

1lb (500 gm) stewing lamb, say neck, chopped into chunks

8-10 sprigs of fresh thyme (or 1 tablespoon of dried)

8 garlic cloves, crushed (or a generous squirt of garlic paste)

16-20 peppercorns, crushed (or several good grindings from a peppermill)

1 teaspoon celery seed (or 6-9 sticks of fresh celery, chopped)

At the beginning, you will need two separate saucepans, as cooking the lamb separately will allow easier removal of the fat and also give you the two meats separately to do something else with after straining. The beef will produce virtually no fat.

Place the meat into the saucepans, add cold water until the meat is well covered and bring it to a boil, skimming off the scum as it rises. Then turn the heat done, cover the pans and simmer the meat for twelve hours. Check it at intervals to make sure the meat is still covered with liquid, adding more if necessary. When the meat is done, strain it, keeping the two types of broth separate. You can use this meat to make pies or whatever. Leave the liquid to cool completely, when you can remove the fat, which will now have set.

Put the two liquids together in a large saucepan and bring back to the boil. Add the seasonings and simmer for an hour, take the soup off the heat and lit it cool before putting it through a fine sieve or a jelly bag. Press well to get all the juice out and discard the solids. Now put the soup back into the cooking pot, having first wiped out any solid residue, and bring it back to simmering temperature, stirring to prevent it sticking, then leave it to simmer, uncovered, for as long as it takes to reduce by three-quarters, checking it at intervals to make sure it has not gone too far. Take it off the heat, let it cool for about half an hour before pouring it into a square or rectangular cake pan lined with baking parchment (fold this at the corners rather than cut it, so there are no holed). Leave it to cool completely, cut into squares, and put these in a very cool oven for several hours to finish drying out. Once dry, wrap each square in parchment and store in a tin until needed. Alternatively, freeze it.

When you need soup, place one or more squares into half a pint of hot water, melt over gentle heat and add more boiling water to adjust the thickness. Now you can add salt.
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