If there is one thing I’ve learned in these first couple weeks of making Thomas Keller recipes- if you want to be able to make a variety of dishes when you want to eat them… be prepared.  Have his staples ready or any dish is going to feel overwhelming.

Garlic Confit… check.

Next up… Beef Broth.

We like BB Ranch at Pike Place because they seem to have everything and I don’t have to worry about eating unhappy animals.  (how humane of me)  In true form, they had some lovely pieces of Femur.

The sound of the saw in the back room as they chopped it up was very chainsaw massacre.

So, take those bones home and roast them in the oven for about an hour or so until they are nice and brown.

When they come out of the oven, take half a charred onion and enough water to cover the bones and start the simmer… for five hours.

Meanwhile, roast these lovely vegetables to add to the stock later.

About 45 minutes, they’ll be nice and caramelized like this…

At this point, you might be thinking that my house smells like lovely stew.  Like coming home when the crock pot has been on all day… nothing could be further from the truth.

In actuality, it smells like my face is in a heard of wet dog.  I’m not clear as to why it smells as bad as it does- but it is truly stinky.  Mark said it’s the smell of carcass.

After five hours, those veggies get added to the stink pot

These simmer for another hour before everything is strained and I end up with this:

Hopefully this will turn into lots of things that aren’t stinky.  I already have my eye on french onion soup.

This particular stock was out of the Bouchon Cookbook, but I’m fairly certain that all of his books have the same one (or quite close)