Hearty Beef Tail Soup

I love soup.  I love making soup.  And I love experimenting with tastes and textures, developing new recipes (or at least, new to me).  I am sure that my "experimentation" paths have already been covered by many cooks and chefs, but it pleases me to think that I have come up with something new. I bought some pasture-raised, hormone/antibiotic free beef from Wright Family Farms in Rome, GA, and one of the packages I bought was beef tail.  It was amazing in this recipe!
So, on to my "new" hearty beef tail soup recipe:

Ingredients:

Beef tail pieces (about 2lb. including the bones)
6 cups water
1 medium sweet onion (Vidalia is good and pays homage to Georgia), chopped
8 oz. baby carrots (or chopped carrots)
1 lb. baby gold potatoes, cut into quarters
2 cups Rioja Tempranillo wine (robust Spanish red wine)
16 oz. plum Tomatoes, blanched and peeled
1 can tomato paste
2 cloves chopped garlic
4 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. celery seed
1 tbsp. ground dried sage
Cracked black pepper
Sea salt
2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

Preparation:

Put the water in a stock pot and bring to a boil over high heat. 

Heat a large sauté pan over medium high heat.  Add 1 tbsp. olive oil and let pan get pretty hot, but not smoking.

Sprinkle the tail pieces with sea salt, cracked pepper and half of the cumin evenly to coat.  Drizzle with a bit of olive oil, and rub cumin all over the meat.  Add to the sauté pan and sear on all sides.  When meat is seared, add carrots, potatoes and onion to the sauté pan for about 3-4 minutes and let them get almost carmelized.

Add the meat and vegetables to the boiling water and turn down the heat to a soft boil/simmer.  Let this mixture cook for at 1-2 hours. 

Add the garlic, the rest of the cumin, sage, celery seed, tomatoes and tomato paste, stir and return to soft boil.  Add the wine, and return to soft boil.  Let this mixture cook for at least 2 more hours, reducing the liquid by about half.  If the tomatoes don’t fall apart by themselves, use a masher to gently smush them.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the bones and larger meat pieces that haven’t fallen apart yet.  Put them on a cutting board and cut them into bite sized pieces.  The meat should fall apart and off the bone very easily, and should be very tender.

Add the meat back into the soup, and add the chopped broccoli.  Allow the soup to cook for about ½ hour more to cook the broccoli.  Season to taste with salt and pepper if needed at the very end of the cooking time.

Garnish with a dollop of sour cream and a sprig of parsley if desired to make the dish pop, and serve with a crusty baguette and a glass of the Rioja.  Enjoy!