Beef stock

You'll never get a good beef stock without meat and bones. In some supermarkets in the Netherlands you can buy soup packages to make your own stock, but what they provide is a miserable quantity, barely enough for one cup of soup. That's why so many recipes advise to add a stock cube to your own stock. Pure nonsense!
The amounts in the recipe below will yield two litres of good beef stock. But you'll need a six litre pan to make it.
There are some links in the recipe to the tips & tricks of broth making. There you can find descriptions of how to strain, reduce, cool and keep your broth. Because that is the same for all broths and stocks, this information is gathered on one page. On that page you can also find links to other recipes for stocks and soups.
Preparation time 15 minutes; cook time 4 hours ; total time 5 hours.

Ingredients
1 kilo (2 pounds) soupbones (beef)
500 (1 pound) gram shin of beef
1 leek
2 large carrots
1 onion with skin
500 gram (3 1/4 cups) tomatoes
10 sprigs of cellery (not stem celery, the variety with thin green stalks and dark green leaves that look a lot like lovage)
1 sprig lovage
some rue if you have it in your kitchen garden
3 bay leaves
1 sprig thyme
some small pieces of mace
freshly ground black pepper
3 litres (6 pints or 3/4 gallon) water

Preparation in advance
Wash and clean all vegetables, cut them coarsely.
If you want a really dark stock, start with browning the bones seperately in a hot oven (220 dgC/425 dgF). Then transfer the bones without the fat that has run out of them to the soup pan.

Preparation
Add meat and cold water to the bones, bring to the boil. Then skim very carefully before adding the vegables, herbs and spices. Cover the pan with a lid and let the stock simmer for four hours on a very slow fire. The stock does not need be boiling.
You can use a pressure cooker, but remember that you can not fill a pressure cooker to the rim, for this amount you'll need a cooker with a content at least 7 litres.

Strain the stock, and reduce to two litres, then let it cool quickly. Now you can freeze what you don't need immediately. 
Do not forget to label your frozen stock, in the freezer all stocks look alike.

Ingredients
All descriptions of ingredients

Bibliography
The editions below are in my possession. Links refer to available editions.
All books mentioned on this site (with short reviews)