Who’d of thought, that one could devote and entire Sunday afternoon, trying to turn water from its original clarity, to a muddy greasy yellowish liquid, then back to as close to a clear liquid again. But, I have proved that yes, you can. I’m living proof.
Why, you ask? Well, for the shear pleasure of standing over a hot steaming pot, with a spoon skimming off fat droplets, and other foamy looking nastiness. Doesn’t everyone?
Going into this project, I figured the time spent would be fairly low once everything was dumped into the pot. That really didn’t turn out to be the case. Seemed like every 15-20 minutes, I would find myself hovering over the pot, picking out pockets of fat, and skimming off brownish foam.
After a few hours of this, I finally got to the point of running the stock through the Chinois for the first time, only to put it back onto the heat, and continue with the process of skimming, then letting this reduce as well.
One more run through the Chinois, then put the stock into the fridge and let cool for a couple of hours.
Even after all that damn skimming, I still found minute pieces of fat!!
All said and done, I didn’t leave the house the entire afternoon, and found it hard to even read or watch a movie, from all the interruptions.
On a positive note, I will admit that when I finished and poured the stock into containers for freezing, it was very clear, and had a wonderful flavor.
Will I do this again? Sigh……Yeah, probably.
I went back to my French laundry book, and see that Keller recommends dropping ice into the stock half-way through the cooking procedure to allow the fat to settle to the top for easy removal. He also waits until after that to place the vegetables into the stock. I failed to do either of these, thus, making the procedure much harder than needed.
Chicken Stock:
Bones from one whole chicken (you might want to spend more time trimming the fat, unlike me).
1+ gallon of water
4 large carrots (diced)
3 stalks celery (diced)
1 large yellow onion (diced)
4 cloves garlic (whole)
1 tablespoon peppercorns
Instructions: Hours of mindless skimming (Didn’t you read the first part??)
1 comment:
Good post. It's always nice to see people making an effort to make stock at home. Makes me feel like there truly are still home cooks out there.
You seem to be making this hard on yourself though. You might try reading "Think Like A Chef" by Tom Colicchio. His stock methods are great.
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