German-Style Oxtail Soup Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is special about oxtail soup? ›

Oxtail soup makes the best bone broth!

The oxtail meat will impart a crazy amount of beefy flavor to the broth—and you can shred it and add it to the soup!

It is not necessary to pre-cook or prepare oxtail before boiling it. However, some people prefer to blanch the oxtail briefly in boiling water to remove any impurities and excess fat. This step can help ensure a cleaner-tasting broth.

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Oxtail soup / Place of origin

Browning your oxtails will not cook the meat. Instead, it will enhance its color and aroma by caramelizing its exterior. Browning beef oxtails in a hot skillet before braising will also add rich depth and flavor to the meat.

That's because oxtail is packed with amazing connective tissues, cartilage, fat and bone and while its cooking these are broken down to the most amazing tender meat and nourishing collagen rich broth packed with nutrients that are great for healing your gut lining.

Why is it more expensive to make an oxtail dish now? It's simple supply and demand. Each cow only has around six pounds of viable oxtail to go around, compared to the other 400 plus pounds of viable cuts you can get from the rest of the cow.

Fill with enough water to cover oxtails and place over high heat. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to medium. Cook oxtails until tender, 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

To prepare: Remove all packaging. Soak the oxtail in cold water for 1 hour. Place in a pan of fresh water, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

As the meat braises, the collagen inside the cut cooks down and becomes gelatin; as it dissolves, the meat's fibers relax and tenderize. However, if the cooking temperature is too high, these muscle fibers will shrink and seize up, toughening.

Then serve this comforting oxtail stew with a side of your choice – mashed potatoes, polenta or rice are perfect for soaking up all that tasty gravy.

What is another name for oxtail soup? ›

Korean oxtail soup

It is colloquially known as "bone soup". The broth is made with raw oxtail, garlic, salt, black pepper, green onions and other typical Korean flavors. The soup must be simmered at low heat for several hours to soften the meat and make the broth.

Oxtail is the tail of a cow. A long time ago, it came from the tail of an ox, but now it comes from the tail of a cow of either sex. The tail is skinned and cut into sections.

The idea behind coating meat with a sprinkling of flour before browning in a hot pan is pretty simple: Flour is full of starch that will caramelize quickly and give a deeper color and flavor.

The History and Tradition of Jamaican Oxtail

The origin of stews like oxtail can be traced back to our colonial heritage. Enslaved Africans on plantations were given very meager amounts of protein and often had to make do with cheaper cuts of meat or ends of slaughtered animals to add protein to their diets.

OK, so if you find that your brown stew 'oxtail' dish has a more bitter taste, this is more than likely due to using too much browning sauce. No worries---you can fix this! Simply break up the bitter taste with a bit of ketchup, brown sugar, and additional stock. This should help!

There is a good amount of fat and collagen that melt into your dishes as oxtail cooks, which will give a wonderful round texture to sauces and that slightly sticky feel to the meat. And the bonus flavor from the bone marrow that will cook into your dishes make this cut one to really get to know and not be afraid of!

Oxtail tastes like beef, but more specifically, like a more tender, silkier short rib in terms of texture. In fact, oxtail is often used on its own to make stock because it's such a gelatinous, rich meat. It is believed that this oxtail soup recipe was created in the 1700s in London by French and Flemish immigrants.

The origin of stews like oxtail can be traced back to our colonial heritage. Enslaved Africans on plantations were given very meager amounts of protein and often had to make do with cheaper cuts of meat or ends of slaughtered animals to add protein to their diets.

Thought to have originated in London's east end by Spitalfields-dwelling Huguenots in the seventeenth century, the dish combines beef tails in a vegetable stew. For our friends in the Far East, however, their version of the dish has a more compelling backstory; romantic – with a side order of spooky, to boot.