Souper Tuesday: Beefy beans and marrow bones soup

The cheap beef choices are often overlooked in favour of “better” cuts that have good PR. I love a marbled ribeye steak, a decent sirloin and a lovely whole fillet from time to time, cooked until soft and perfectly pink. But often, the best beefy flavour lies elsewhere in the butchery fridge: over there with the cheap cuts.

The monarch of cheap beef, for me, is short rib. Cut into neat chunks, each piece has plenty of meat, a bit of fat and a lot of taste. It needs time, and once it has been cooked down very gently to soft perfection, it can even be caramelised in a pan to finish it off. And by then, it is fit for a plate in a five-star restaurant.

So, you could use short rib for this soup, but you really can go lower down the rung to something like chuck, bolo or shin. Then, once you’ve chosen the one you fancy, reach for a packet of beef marrow bones too, or ask the butcher if there are any.

For this soup you also need two cans of beans in brine, and I went for one each of red kidney and speckled sugar beans, and some fresh green beans. I hesitated in the bacon aisle, the prices being so ridiculous now, but found the cheapest pack I could, because this sort of soup needs some kind of pork element.

To provide complementary sweetness and acid, I chose canned tomato and fresh carrots, and threw in some potatoes for body.

Carrying everything was the strong, flavourful beef stock. No garnish was needed, really, because a single good-looking round of marrow bone looks wonderful at the top of this kind of soup, but I did make a few simple white-bread croutons to scatter on top.



Tony’s beefy bean and marrow bone soup

Ingredients

(Makes about 3 litres)

4 Tbsp butter

3 sprigs of rosemary

Oil, a splash

2 large white onions, diced

3 large carrots, peeled and diced

3 bacon rashers, chopped

2 potatoes, peeled and diced small

750g cheap beef, cut into chunks

800g beef marrow bones

1 can of red kidney beans and their brine

1 can of speckled sugar beans in their brine

1 can of chopped tomatoes

400g fresh green beans, chopped

2 bay leaves

Salt and black pepper to taste

2.5 litres good beef stock

Cornflour, mixed with a little water, to bind

Method

Melt the butter at the bottom of a heavy soup pot. Add the rosemary sprigs and simmer on a very low heat for a few minutes for the rosemary to infuse the butter. Remove the rosemary, or strain it through a sieve. Return the rosemary-infused butter to the pot and discard the rosemary.

Add a little oil and all the chopped onion and sauté until soft, stirring. Add the diced carrot and continue in the same way. Add the chopped bacon and cook, stirring, for three minutes or so. Add the diced potato, stir, and place a cartouche on top of the pot’s contents. A cartouche? That’s a round of greaseproof paper that you can cut with a pair of scissors. With the cartouche covering the vegetables, simmer on the lowest heat for 10 minutes, with the lid on. They’ll sweat nicely. Remove the cartouche.

Cut the cheap beef into small pieces and add them, giving the pot a stir. There’s no need to brown them because you want to incorporate the meat into the soup.

Add the marrow bones, then the contents of the cans of beans, including their brine, and the chopped tomatoes. Stir in the green beans too.

Add the bay leaves, season with salt and pepper, and pour in the beef stock.

Bring to a brisk boil, then turn the heat right down and put the lid on.

Simmer gently, covered, until the beef is soft and blending into the soup. Taste and decide whether you want to adjust the seasoning. If you can find them, remove the bay leaves.

After an hour or more, or when you are satisfied that the meat is very tender, stir in some cornflour that has been dissolved in cold water, and stir the pot slowly while the soup thickens, just five minutes or so.

Quickly fry a few tiny squares of white bread in a bit of oil in a pan and use them as a garnish. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed in a bowl by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.