Oxtail stew

I would like to buy a house. Problem is, I do not have enough money. How to solve this problem? I need to save money. Step 1 was to move some money into a savings account at 5.35% interest. Good.  Step 2 was to look for cheap cuts of meat from which I could prepare a filling, warm, fatty nutritious lunchtime meals for work. Oxtail! Protein, gelatin, collagen, minerals, tendons, ligaments, cartilage and of course fat. Fat, that is all I need.


If I decide accounting is not for me, I could write a one hit wonder remix song 'All you need is fat'. I'd be up on stage, dancing around with people dressed in lamb chop and T-bone steak costumes. Perhaps it would motivate people to say 'no' to the brainwashing of their overweight low fat diet advocate doctors and 'yes' to a different, more caveman-like approach to their diet. I know I make cakes; read my 'About' page.

At first I was a little scared of cooking with oxtail as the thought of a tail cut up into big chunks where I could see some kind of spiney bone was a bit weird. If you poke the middle of the bone, it is soft and a bit squishy. I asked my dad if he wanted to poke it but he said no:) Luckily oxtail is not so scary and I found it lots of fun to cook with. Why shouldn't you eat the tail? If the animal died so you can eat the steaks, you may as well treat the animal with respect and eat every part.

This is what oxtail pieces look like in a badly lit kitchen

More information about the benefits of 'odd animal bits' can be found on my favourite health website, Mark's Daily Apple.

I had no clue how to make oxtail stew. I looked at a variety of recipes on the internet and mashed them all together resulting in something I could make at home for minimal cost.

Oxtail stew
This recipe serves 4
Next time I would increase the portins slightly so that I can make 5 servings, one for each day of the week
I froze it and microwaved it at work for my lunch. It freezes/microwaves well. The lunch servings filled me up and made me feel warm and happy:)

What you need

• 1kg oxtail
• Butter
• 500ml beef stock
• 2 cans diced tomatoes
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, diced
• 2 bay leaves
• Thyme
• Pepper
• 2 carrot, diced
• 5 celery stalks, sliced

What you need to do

1. Brown the oxtails with butter, on each side in a large pot.
2. Add beef stock, tomatoes, onion, garlic, bay leaves, sprinkle of thyme and pepper to the pot.
3. Simmer for one hour.
4. Add the carrot and celery to the pot and simmer for a further two hours, or until the meat falls off the bones.
5. Put on an apron or wear your most bogan clothes as the next step has the potential for messiness.Take a tail piece out of the stew and cut away the meat. Add the meat back to the stew. Repeat for all other tail pieces.
6. Eat the stew:)

Do not throw out the tails. If you were not able to chop off all the meat from the bones, then eat it with your hands. It is however VERY MESSY yet fun. I wore an apron to go about this task. I had tomato sauce all down my chin:)

Some say to refrigerate the stew overnight and scrape off the layer of fat in the morning. Well, I did not do this. Upon warming the stew up at work, I did notice a lot of orange fatty bits on the top. Meh, I liked it!:) I did also save some of the 'soup' part of the stew and refridgerated it. On this, I did notice a lot more fat, which I scooped off.

This is a great recipe (the meat is soooo soft!) and I will make it again later this week. I am excited!! Cans of tuna for lunch just do not match the greatness of oxtail stew:(