Beef Shank Bone Soup

This is a delicious recipe that my kids love, but it takes about 3 hours to make. To me, I enjoy cooking long meals. Society today has become so hectic, with everyone tossing a TV-dinner into the microwave. There's no love in that! I enjoy cooking, the longer the better.

Ingredients:

• 1 to 2 lbs. Beef Shank Bone meat
• 1" fresh ginger
• 2 cubes beef bullion
• 1 to 2 cubes chicken bullion
• 1 medium yellow onion
• ¼ to ½ small head of cabbage
• salt and pepper to taste (I start with ½ teaspoon of salt and about 1/4 teaspoon pepper)

Place meat into pot. Cover meat at least 1" with water. The best part of this meal is the awesome bone-marrow that boils out from the bone. You need to keep the meat covered with water in order for it to cook. Beef Bone Shank is tough if you don't cook it long enough. You can't overcook this meal, so I give it about 3-4 hours to simmer under a medium flame. A gentle boiling is ideal in the center, but your heat is too high if the whole pot is boiling. You want to set your heat just where the soup is starting to boil. When done, the meat will fall right off the bone. You'll see a hollow bone with all the marrow in the soup. Delicious!

Cover the pot for the entire cooking time. After an hour or so, you will need to add some more water to your soup to compensate for lost steam. Keep the meat covered so it can cook properly.

Cooking Rule: Always place the lid positioned slightly off the pot so that steam can escape. This will prevent water from boiling over from the pot when the lid is fully in place.

Add all your ingredients at the beginning, except the cabbage (add the cabbage after about an hour). I wouldn't add any more salt or pepper than listed above until towards the end. The reason is because your soup's flavor is going to enhance as it cooks. I usually will add more salt and pepper towards the end (to taste). Be careful because if you add too much salt or pepper you can't undo it, unless you add a bunch more water and let it stew for a little longer. I usually buy a 2 pack of beef bone shank and use them both at once.

I cut my onions into half circles. I peel most of the skin off the 1" of ginger before tossing it whole into the pot. The ginger essence is hardly noticeable in the soup when it's done. The great thing about the ginger is that it absorbs all that floating brown residue that comes from the meat as it's cooking. It all goes away. I think it's amazing. The ginger perfectly complements the soup.

Some people like to add the entire head of cabbage, but I think that's way too much. I actually only use about ½ of a small head of cabbage. I use both beef and chicken bullions cubes. There is no set rule, but remember that these cubes do contain salt, so it's difficult to determine how much salt to add in this recipe. You'll need to adjust it according to your own taste at the end. Over time you'll get good at doing this. You may want to use all chicken or all beef bullion. I have found that chicken cubes are stronger in flavor than beef cubes. Also, you certainly can add more cubes for more flavor.

Potatoes go great with this soup, but you want to add them towards the end or else they'll cook into mush. I realize it may seem sacrilegious to add canned potatoes to such a fresh dish, but I actually prefer to add 1 can of drained whole peeled potatoes in the last 15 minutes of cooking (30 minutes for fresh cut potatoes; test for softness before removing from heat).

It's the bone marrow in the Beef Shank that really flavors this delicious soup. I stir my soup every 30 minutes or so. Cooking is an art which requires patience and practice.