Bulalo - Consomme
I love bulalo. Bulalo is a beef soup made from shank of a cow seasoned with fish sauce and pepper. In Batangas, where this dish is popular, they serve the broth in pitchers and pour it in your bowl. As you slurp your soup they give you a refill when you are running low. The marrow of the bone is the gem of this dish. Its delicate meat is rich in flavor and should be slowly savored like caviar.
Inspired with this experience, I took the broth and decided to learn how to make it into a consomme.
A consomme is a clear soup that is drank out of a glass. By making this soup clear and concentrating the aroma in a wine glass, accentuates the smells like that of a bulaluhan restaurant. I added the bone inside the glass of visual effect. To eat it, you would remove the bone, suck on it to get the marrow. Then drink the broth to wash it down.
Here's how to do it.
Bulalo gets its flavor from the beef shank. So extracting as much beef flavor is imperative. I was inspired by Heston Blumenthal on how he made a chicken broth. He used milk powder.
Yes, milk powder is powdered proteins which can be used to add more browning flavors.
Ingredients
1 Beef Shank
1 packet of powdered milk
fish sauce to taste
pepper
- First, roast beef shank in a dutch oven. Use a sift to spread powdered milk on the beef shank. Roast in oven at 350 degrees F. Bake until brown. The milk powder enhances the beef and roasting flavors.
- Next, take the beef shank out of the oven and into the stove. Pour water until it covers the beef shank. Simmer for about an hour. Season with fish sauce and pepper.
- To make the consumme. Pour the beef broth into a freezable container. Once the broth has cooled to room temperature, place in freezer until frozen.
- Place the broth over a whisk and muslin cloth. This is to catch the impurities and to make it a clear broth. Side note: this is a very simple way of making this style of soup.
- Serve on a wine glass.
Frozen Bulalo Broth
on a muslin cloth. Just needs to be heated through and your are done.
