If I'm ever on death row, serve me a bowl of Cosido as my final meal.
Cosido de Res
Ingredients
Method
- Soak and rinse the shanks, bones, beef for ~10 minutes to remove some of the impurities for a clearer broth.
- In a large stock pot, place all of the beef and enough water to cover it plus an ~inch.
- Bring to a boil, skim off the scum*, and lower heat to a rolling simmer.
- Add 1 onion cut in half, few sprigs of cilantro, and ~3 TBSP of salt. Cook for 1.5 - 2 hours until almost fork tender.
- In the meantime prep the vegetables by chopping them into evenly large pieces.
- When beef is almost done, add vegetables in stages based on cooking times to avoid mushy veggies. Start with corn, carrots, and green beans.
- Start seasoning with salt to taste at this point.
- 10 minutes later, add potatoes.
- 15 minutes later, add zucchini.
- Continue simmering until all vegetables are cooked and the beef is fork tender.
- Finely chop cilantro and onion for serving and garnishing.
- Serve with corn tortillas, favorite salsa (I always make a tomatillo salsa to go with this), lime, and chopped onion/cilantro.
Notes
- Don't bother making this if you don't use shank, as a thank you for your efforts you can have a bone marrow taco.
- Beef chuck is filler meat, sometimes I'll use beef neck with plenty of meat still on the bones. Other times I simply use more shank.
- Removing the scum in the early minutes helps avoid a cloudy broth.
- The vegetables I noted above are my favorites, but others will use Mexican Squash instead of zucchini, chayote is something I grew up eating but was never my favorite so its optional.
- Some will add cabbage, I've yet to try it, but will update the recipe when I do.
Source
This was one of my favorite meals growing up, and one of the first meals that I replicated and got right the first time around due to its simplicity. It's a beef and vegetable soup. That's it.