Beef and Onion Soup

Want the delicious taste of well-marbled, expertly-roasted beef without all the fat? Here's how.

Equipment:
Pressure cooker
Wide Dutch oven

Ingredients:
A well-marbled boneless chuck roast
A large can of chicken broth
5 onions, roughly chopped
1 carrot, chopped fine
3 ribs celery, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, minced
A handful of chopped parsley
Sachet d'epices (peppercorn, thyme, parsley, bay leaf)

Seasonings:
Worcestershire
Maggi Seasoning
Soy sauce
Dry sherry

To Serve:
Cooked parboiled rice


Salt and pepper both sides of the chuck roast, and coat the bottom of a wide Dutch oven with peanut oil.

Brown both sides of the roast in the Dutch oven, about 4 minutes per side.

Deglaze the Dutch oven with some water, then return the roast to the Dutch oven and braise uncovered at 325F for an hour. The water should come up the sides of the roast only about half way, which means the water level should only be about 1/2" to 3/4" deep.

Flip the roast and braise for another hour. Add a little water if the pan is running dry (usually it doesn't).

Flip the roast again and braise for another hour, adding a little water if necessary, or until fork tender.

Let the roast cool in the Dutch oven on a cooling rack.

Put the roast into a sealable container and refrigerate overnight.

Deglaze the fond in the Dutch oven and reserve in a separate sealable container. This little lovely has more flavor in it than you can imagine, so we're going to use it to great effect in the soup.

The following day, remove the layer of solidified fat from the deglazed fond. Scrape any brown stuff from the underside of the fat layer back into the fond. A little fat will go with it, but it's negligible.

Remove the roast from its container and carefully remove all the solidified fat you can find. If you see anything dark brown along with the whitish cold fat then scrape that brown stuff off the fat and into the container of deglazed fond you reserved.

Cut the roast into inch-thick rashers against the grain, then stand each on its side and slice 1/4" slices. Then stack those slices and cut into 1/4" julienne. Finally, cross-cut the julienne into 1/4" cubes.

You'll find more large pieces of whitish solidified fat inside the roast as you break it down. Just dig them out as you go and keep the meat.

Your cutting board will probably have some brown fond on it. Scrape it up and add it to the meat.

To the pressure cooker, add the chopped roast meat, reserved deglazed fond, chicken broth, vegetables, parsley, sachet d'epices, and two teaspoons of Kosher salt.

Close and lock, and bring to the steam point where timing begins.

Cook for 7 minutes from the steam point, then turn off the heat and trip the steam release valve. After the steam safely releases (about four minutes) and the safety lock releases, open the pressure cooker and remove the sachet d'epices.

Adjusting for seasoning may be a little tricky because all the seasonings are laden with their own dose of salt.

Start by adding a tablespoon of Worcestershire and two teaspoons of Maggi Seasoning, then tasting. It should still be a bit undersalted at this point. If so, add a couple tablespoons of soy sauce and taste again. Keep adding soy sauce until proper salinity is reached, then finish with a couple tablespoons of dry sherry (or to taste).

Spoon a couple tablespoons of cooked parboiled rice into a bowl, ladle on some of the soup, and serve.

Notes:

1. Cooking the roast slowly at a low temperature for three hours renders most of the fat out of the roast. Refrigerating it overnight and removing the remaining solidified fat the following day gets rid of most of the remainder. What's left is there to make the meat tasty and tender, but no more than that. You let the fat do its wonderful job, now let it retire somewhere else.
2. Use only parboiled rice for this, and mix it with the soup just before serving. Never mix together with the soup and refrigerate, because that will ruin the dish. Parboiled rice is much firmer and doesn't explode into a starch orgasm like regular rice does, so it remains separated in the soup like it should.
3. Why chicken broth instead of beef broth? Because it adds another flavor dimension, and beef broth makes this dish too bitter, bland, and one-dimensional. Let real slow-roasted beef make the dish taste like beef; let the chicken broth give the vegetables a flavorful foundation.

Yeah, it takes time, but it's *so* worth it to see the look on your family's faces. And it doesn't clog up your arteries because of all the fat you removed.