Creole Bouilli, a boiled roast, slow-stewed with beef bones and seasoning vegetables and served over rice or potatoes with juices spooned on top for meal one, and a flavorful beef vegetable soup or second meal next day.
Creole Bouilli - Boiled Soup Meat Roast with Bone Broth
I love soup, and yes, around here it is usually featured as a main dish meal, accompanied by some kind of bread, crackers or a sandwich, rather than just a starter soup course to go along with an entree of some kind.
For the most part, I want those soups to be quick and easy, although there are times I do put a little bit more of my time into them.
While you can certainly shortcut it, Chicken and Dumplings - generally a bit of a cross between a soup and a stew - is one example of a soup that benefits from time. You just cannot beat the flavor of a chicken and dumplings that starts with a stewed, whole hen or chicken, and the richness of the finished dish that develops out of that.
Chicken Noodle Soup is another one. Though you can certainly short cut that soup too, and I often do, especially when I'm feeling a little under the weather, the flavor really shines when you start with a whole chicken. There is just such a huge difference!
Others, like Italian Wedding Soup, have elements, in this case, meatballs, or for French Onion Soup, caramelized onions, that can be prepped ahead of making the actual soup. Others, like Ham Bone Dumplings, or other soups that start with a ham bone-based stock benefit from a head start too.
Beef and vegetable soup is another, and I'm not referencing hamburger soup that uses ground beef, but rather a soup that begins with a roast. While I often shortcut that process by using beef sirloin, the best is when you start with a roast, and even better when you can include some soup bones!
Back in the day, that beef and vegetable soup often came as a second meal from the preparation of a soup meat, a boiled roast, though it is more of a "simmered" roast than boiled, that was used in the preparation of a meat broth, intended for use in other meals.
Like the French, the Creoles refer to it as The Bouilli (pronounced boo-yee), referring to meat stewed in juice, and from which bouillon, consommé and pot-au-feu was prepared, and then the meat discarded. The Creoles, however, rejected the idea that the meat was all used up, and only good to be discarded.
They came up with many different ways to use The Bouilli in a second meal. According to The Picayune Creole Cookbook, the theory that there was nutrition remaining in the boiled beef, proved to be supported by medical science, making "The Bouilli" valuable as food.
The beef is often shredded and first served as a simple meal with rice or potatoes and the juices spooned over top, and perhaps served with some kind of vegetable or a salad and bread. Any remaining meat would then be refrigerated along with the broth for a second meal, often, and in this case, soup.
I'm starting mine with a 4-pound beef chuck boneless shoulder roast and some soup bones. Although I do include a summary version of the soup with the recipe here, I'll be sharing the actual full soup recipe method, with measurements and an ingredient list on a future post. I may even get around to some additional ways to utilize "The Bouilli' in some other recipes on down the line!
Here's how to make my Bouille, a soup meat with bone broth, and as always, full recipe text with measurements and instructions, as well as a printable document, are a little bit further down the page. Just swipe or scroll past the step-by-step pictures below.
First, season your roast on all sides with salt, or a quality seasoning salt, and some freshly cracked black pepper, This time, I got this all-purpose Everglades Seasoning that a reader told me about, and I bought some to try. It's a mix of salt, unspecified "spices," garlic, onion, sugar and papain - a proteolytic enzyme that is an extraction of the fruit of the papaya plant.
It's a seasoning blend that their family commonly uses to tenderize wild game, so I wanted to try it on this roast. While it seems to be pretty popular, she failed to tell me that along with the papaya plant extract, it also contains MSG for tenderizing, so if you're sensitive to that you'd want to pass on this one. I'm not.
Give the roast a generous sprinkling all over.
Heat oil in soup pot or Dutch oven, brown roast on all sides.
Meanwhile, season bones all over.
Remove the roast and set it aside to rest.
Add the bones to hot oil and brown those all over.
Remove bones and set aside. Add a splash of the water to deglaze the pot.
Add bones back to the pot.
Cover with the remaining water, bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer, cover and cook for 30 minutes.
While that's simmering, get your stock veggies prepped. I'm using onion, celery with the leaves and bay leaf.
Add roast to pot with bones, adding enough additional water to cover roast, if needed.
Add onion, celery and bay leaf; bring to a boil, then immediately reduce to a low simmer.
Cover and cook for about 2-1/2 to 3 hours, or until meat is very tender. Total time will depend on size of roast.
Remove roast and set aside until cool enough to handle. Shred into large chunks. Discard bones. Spoon off fat from the top. For the first meal, I like to serve this as pictured at the top, shredded meat with rice or potatoes, and juices spooned over top, though you certainly could make a gravy.
Refrigerate remaining meat and broth for soup. Once fat solidifies on top, scrape off and discard if desired, before making soup. When ready to prepare soup, measure off 2 to 3 cups of the shredded or chopped meat, or whatever you need for the next recipe.
I've posted the soup recipe that I made in a separate post but in the meantime, here's the basics.
Heat up 8 cups of the reserved bone broth. Add 1 cup of peeled and cubed potatoes, 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes and 3 cups of mixed vegetables, along with salt, pepper, garlic powder and a mix of dried herbs. Simmer for about 20 minutes, or until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally. Add meat and simmer until heated through. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.
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