firepot | Sybaritica

Today’s experiment takes place on Day 9 of the Firepot Stock Project which began with Part 1, the making of the basic stock. Part 1 required two days to complete, and on Day 5, after resting the stock, I brought it to the boil to keep it fresh. I also replenished some of the water and simmered it with some added meat, bone and vegetable trimmings I had leftover from a couple of other recipes cooked in the meantime.  As you can see, our stock, even before the next major evolution, is acquiring new depths and layers of flavor.

The idea, here in Part 2, is to very slowly simmer a small ‘roast’ of beef in the stock and, at the same time, cook some vegetables in the pot along with it so that we will, in effect, be producing a whole meal at once along the lines of a ‘New-England Boiled Dinner’ or a French ‘Pot-au-Feu’. The New-England dish is, of course, based on corned beef, rather than a fresh roast, and the modern Pot-au-Feu tends to be a ‘one-off’ dish rather than a perpetual stew sort of affair, but the general spirit of both is preserved here and thus I am dubbing this experiment a ‘Firepot Beef Dinner’… Read more