To make beef stock, you can buy beef bones from the butcher, or, use the bone from a roast you cooked that had the bone in. In fact, many feel that the bone from a roast is the best kind to use, owing to the roasted flavour. Even if you don’t need the stock at the time, it’s no work to make and you freeze it till you need it.
Put the beef bone(s) in a pot with enough water to generously cover. You can salt the water if you wish, but not too much; leave the salting for the recipe in which you are actually going to use the stock. A few bay leaves go well with it, but other than that, again, leave the flavouring for the recipe you’ll be using it in. This gives you a more multi-purpose stock that you can dress up as appropriate for whatever you ultimately use it in. Simmer for up to an hour, covered. Check on it to make sure that your water doesn’t simmer away. Then strain the stock into a plastic tub and freeze.
As with many stocks, beef stock is actually made more efficiently (and better tasting, some feel), in a pressure cooker. Do as above, but 30 minutes should be enough time.
It’s probably best to keep some beef stock cubes on hand because no matter how much any cook may prefer real beef stock, there always comes a time when you run short of it. Oxo is a well-known brand of beef stock cubes. They have a very long storage life.
Substitutes
In the UK, you can buy fresh beef stock in the chiller sections of grocery stores. Otherwise, broth cubes or canned beef broth.
When you cook black beans, you can reserve and freeze the bean stock, and use that when you want a heartier stock to use in place of or to complement beef stock when the result would be right in a recipe.