This Oxtail Soup Recipe will show you how to make a delicious traditional sopa de rabo right at home. A warm dish everyone will love.
What is Oxtail Soup
Oxtails are used in several Cuban dishes. They are beef bones that are packed with collagen and lend an intense beefy flavor to any dish. Years ago, markets and butchers would almost give this cut away but the popularity of bone broth and collogen rich dishes has caused the cut to be more expensive than ever before.
This soup is a nod to Cuba’s African roots that many Caribbean countries share. Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua along with other countries in Central and South America have a similar style of oxtail soup. The flavorings slightly vary but the fundamentals of the soup are the same. This unctuous oxtail soup is made by simmering together beef tails and vegetables. The rich and tasty broth is finished with fresh herbs.
Oxtail Soup is a perfect meal on its own, but you can pair it with White Rice, Arepas Venezolanas, Grilled Avocado
Tips For Making Our Oxtail Soup:
Choose wisely:
If you have the opportunity to pick out the oxtail pieces from your butcher, it’s worth it. You want to use mostly large pieces in the soup. They have the most meat and a large bone so they will give a lot of flavor. But don’t skip the small oxtail pieces. Those will give a lot of collagen and body to your soup. Choosing the combination for the soup is key.
Long but worth it:
This recipe isn’t a quicky but it’s worth all the wait. After the oxtails boil and the meat starts pulling away from the bone we ask you to cool the broth and refrigerate it for a few hours. As delicious as oxtails are, they have a lot of fat. Allowing the broth to cool down and refrigerate will cause the fat to rise to the top of the broth and will make it easier to remove. This will leave you with a pure and a much healthier broth. If you skip this step it is completely ok, but keep in mind the broth will be slightly more oily and fatty.
Skimming the scum:
When you are making any homemade broth or soup it’s important to “skim the scum.” The scum is the dark foam that floats to the top of the water. You can remove it with a small mesh sieve or a spider. Just move it along the surface and dump it into another bowl to discard it. Continue to do so until most of the foam is gone. It’s important not to mix your broth until you do this. Just as the water begins to boil, you can start to skim. Skimming will keep your broth clear and the broth will taste more clean and pure. If you don’t remove any of the foam, it will still taste good but it will be cloudy.
Ways to Make it Yours:
You can add many different things to your oxtail but we keep it simple with two starchy veggies (pumpkin and malanga) and softer leaner vegetables like zucchini and spinach. Stay away from using too much corn, pumpkin or sweet potato or the soup will be too sweet. If you don’t love malanga, yuca or potato is a great alternative to add. It’s not typical in Cuban cuisine, but a little spice adds a great flavor to this soup.
Try Some of Our Other Delicious Soup Recipes
Oxtail Soup (Sopa de Rabo)
Course: Soups4
servings15
minutes3
hours300
kcalIngredients
3 pounds of oxtail (8 large pieces and 4 smaller pieces)
2 large yellow onions, quartered
3 carrots, small dice
1 yellow squash, small dice
1 zucchini, small dice
1 pound of frozen malanga, precut in large pieces
½ pound of pumpkin, cut in large pieces
2 cups of baby spinach
2 bay leaves
Salt and freshly cracked pepper
½ cup of parsley, finely chopped
¼ cup cilantro, finely chopped
Optional: hot sauce or a thinly sliced serrano pepper
Directions
- In a very large pot place the oxtail and 12 cups of water. Start your heat on high.
- Bring the water to a boil. Once it boils, lower to medium low and continue to boil. For the first 20 minutes, skim the foam that forms at the top of the pot. (See note above for more details on this).
- Once the scum has been removed, add the onion pieces, 1 tablespoon of salt.
- Cover and cook with a soft boil for 2 hours or until the meat is tender and pulling away from the bone. The liquid will reduce but you will be left with about 6-8 cups.
- Remove the broth from the heat and allow it to cool for 20 minutes.
- Then place the broth in a glass bowl and refrigerate for 2-3 hours. You will see the fat rise to the top of the liquid.
- Once the fat is settled to the top and forms a white opaque layer, remove all of it. You don’t have to obsess over this part. Remove as much as you can.
- Pour all of the liquid into the pot (it will be thick and gelatinous). Add 2 cups of water, the bay leaves, the malanga, chunks of pumpkin let it come to a boil then lower to medium. Cook for 30 – 40 minutes until the malanga and pumpkin are tender.
- Taste for salt and add more if necessary. Add the carrots, squash and zucchini and cook for another 15 minutes.
- Add the spinach, parsley and cilantro. Check again for seasoning and add salt and pepper if necessary.
- If you want some spice, you can add a few dashes of hot sauce or thinly sliced serrano chilies at this point.
