Stocks

1. STOCKS

They form the foundation of many sauces and dishes after all. What is a risotto without a good stock? Rubbish, thats what! As well as good flavour, a homemade stock should provide a good amount of body resulting from good gelatin extraction from animal bones and cartilage. Stock pots, cubes and powders simply don't provide this gelatin content which is essential to providing reduced sauces with nice syrupy consistencies. On many occasions, I have attempted to make a nice sauce for a steak or chicken using one of these pots/cubes/powders. However, I always end up with a watery, flavourless mess. The closest thing you can get in the shops are perhaps ready made stocks. I would advise reducing these down to intensify their flavour and improve their consistency. Now, I understand that many people will be thinking, "why doesn't he just thicken his sauces with cornflour, arrowroot or some form of roux?". Well, it all comes down to flavour. As I've said, you just can't beat the flavour of a home made stock. Besides, if the pros can do it, I want to do it too!

The most fundamental stocks are chicken (white and brown), veal/beef (white and brown), fish (fumet) and vegetable (nage). It is my quest to find out the holy grail of stock recipes and techniques which will open up a new world of wonderful recipes and flavours!

I'll begin with chicken stock. There are two types of chicken stock, white and brown. White chicken stock basically involves simmering raw chicken carcasses in order to extract gelatin and create a flavourful, but delicate stock. This can then be used as the basis for soups and sauces which do not necessarily call for a roasted or overpowering chicken flavour. Thats where brown chicken stock comes in. The same principals apply as for white chicken stock, except now the chicken carcasses are pre-roasted before simmering in water. The end result is a strongly flavoured liquid with the pure essence of roasted chicken. I would recommend using this stock in recipes or sauces in which a chicken flavour is desired. Depending on the recipe it is to be used in, vegetables and flavourings can be simmered along with the chicken to make a more complex flavour profile.

Lets look at white chicken stock. I'm sure everyone that has ever looked at a classical white stock recipe, has seen the word "Mirepoix". This is basically a combination of chopped carrots, onion and celery. They tell you to simmer the bones along with these vegetables to create your stock. In my opinion, for the home cook at least, leave out these aromatics at this stage and just make a pure chicken stock! This way, you can adapt the stock according to whatever you are making by infusing it with vegetables, herbs or spices which are relevant to your recipe. For example, you could infuse it with tarragon/fennel for fish, thyme/root vegetables for chicken, rosemary/garlic for lamb etc. You get the idea, just have a play around!

I mentioned that you would need full chicken carcasses for your stock. Although this is true, I would strongly recommend using chicken wings as the primary element along with leftover chicken carcasses (don't use carcasses left over from a roast chicken as we do not desire a roasted flavour here). Here is the recipe I use;

WHITE CHICKEN STOCK

Ingredients

2kg chicken wings and carcasses

3l cold water

Simply put all of the chicken in a large stock pot and cover with the cold water. Slowly bring to a simmer, skimming any fat or scum that rises to the surface. Gently simmer for 3-4 hours (don't boil the stock as this will create lots of turbulence within the pot and cause some fat and scum to boil into the stock, making it cloudy). Strain the stock and chill. The stock should set like a jelly when cold.

Store in the fridge for up to 3 days or in the freezer for 3 months.

You can either throw the bones away or do what I do and pick the meat from the chicken wings and use them to fill out dishes. Of course, they do not have much flavour as most of it was extracted during the stock making process, but waste not want not. You can mix them into dumplings and serve them with the stock in a chicken noodle soup or even mix the meat through a risotto. Do whatever you fancy.

We now enter the realm of BROWN chicken stock. Here, the previous statement about leaving out vegetables doesn't apply. Now we are after a roasted characteristic along with the flavour of the meat/bones we are using for the stock. Roasting onions for example, gives the most amazing sweet roasted flavour.

The following recipe for brown chicken stock is taken from Heston Blumenthal. The chicken wings and carcasses are roasted after being sprinkled with skimmed milk powder. The idea behind this is to increase the roasted flavour by introducing more sugars and proteins contributing to the Maillard reaction. This is the chemical reaction that occurs between sugars and proteins in meat, once heated above 154 degrees Celcius. This is what creates that wonderful roasted flavour in meat! It is not essential to include the skimmed milk powder, but it does help. Heston also suggests using a pressure cooker in order to keep in as much flavour and aroma as possible. If using a pressure cooker, bring up to maximum pressure, then cook on a low heat for 2 hours only.

BROWN CHICKEN STOCK

Ingredients

2kg chicken wings

1 left over carcass from a roast chicken

3l cold water

75g carrot sliced

150g onions finely sliced

100g button mushrooms quartered

2 cloves of garlic lightly bashed

2tbsp skimmed milk powder (optional)

Pre-heat an oven to 200 degrees Celcius. Sprinkle the chicken wings with skimmed milk powder (if using) and roast in the oven for about an hour until brown all over. Meanwhile, slowly caramelise the onions in a little light olive oil. Add the carrots and caramelise, then add the mushrooms and garlic. cook until the mushrooms are soft. Add the roasted chicken wings and the chicken carcass then add the cold water. 'Deglaze' the roasting pan with a little cold water and add to the stock pot (deglazing is the posh term for adding a cold liquid to the hot caramalised bits that have stuck to the roasting dish during the roasting process. Scrape all the bits from the bottom with a wooden spoon. This should cause the caramelised bits to disolve into the water. We are ensuring that no flavour is thrown away!). Slowly bring to a simmer and skim any fat or scum. Simmer for 4-6 hours. Strain and chill before either keeping in the fridge or freezer. Again, this stock will have a wonderful gelatinous quality.

I made this yesterday and made a roast chicken risotto with tarragon and the meat from the leftover chicken wings.....TIDY!

I would not recommend using this stock for reduction sauces as the flavour is so intense even before any reduction takes place. If reduced (typically by half), the flavour is quite overpowering and can destroy a sauce. I recommend using the white chicken stock, either on its own, or a combination of white stock and brown stock in order to dilute the flavour whilst still giving you the gelatin content required for a lovely sauce consistency.

One final note...please do not add any salt to your stocks! If you perfectly season the stocks as they are, by the time you reduce them (if doing so), the concentraion of salt will effectively increase as water evaporates from the stock, reducing its volume. The result will be a salty mess! Not pleasant.

Next, veal/beef stock. Veal stock is the preffered stock in professional French kitchens. It provides a more neutral flavour than beef stock made from older animals and it contains more collagen (present in the bones and cartilage of younger animals). This means that the finished stock has great body and a flavour that is not over powering. I have not found a white veal/beef stock recipe that excludes mirepoix, but I can't see why it would be completely necessary for the same reasons as the white chicken stock recipe above. The following stock recipe includes pigs trotters as an optional extra to create a more gelatinous stock. I recommend using 1 trotter if using veal bones and 2 trotters if using beef bones (as veal bones will create more gelatin). You can use a mixture of veal and beef bones if you wish.

WHITE VEAL/BEEF STOCK

3kg veal/beef bones (preferably marrow and knuckle bones)

1-2 pigs trotters (optional)

Cover all the ingredients with cold water and slowly bring to a gentle simmer. Skim any fat and scum that rise to the surface and simmer for about 4 hours for a good gelatin extraction. Top restaurants will make massive amounts of veal/beef stock and will simmer them for up to 48 hours. This just wouldn't be practical at home unless you were willing to pay the energy bill and stay awake for a couple of nightshifts! Also, simmering the bones for this length of time causes the stock to turn brown, even without roasting the bones before hand. Once you are happy with the stock, strain it and chill rapidly. Once the stock is cold, remove any solidified fat that has set on the surface. Store the stock in the fridge or freezer.

This white stock is typically used for veloutes, light sauces and soups.

As I said before, brown stocks are all about creating a rich roasted flavour. So, 'Mirepoix' can aid the roasted flavour and provide a wonderful rounded flavour. The red wine and tomato paste provide a deep colour and rich flavour.

BROWN VEAL/BEEF STOCK

3kg veal/beef bones chopped (preferably marrow and knuckle bones)

1-2 pigs trotters (optional)

2 onions chopped

2 carrots chopped

2 celery ribs chopped

1tbsp tomato paste

500ml red wine

small bunch of thyme

Pre-heat an oven to 200 degrees Celcius. Spread the bones and pigs trotters in a single layer onto a baking tray. if need be, roast in a couple of batches. Place the bones into the oven for approximately 1 hour, turning every so often to allow all sides to caramelise and brown. Place the roasted bones into a large stock pot and drain of most of the fat away. Leave a small amount of fat in the baking tray and add the chopped onions, carrots and celery. Allow the vegetables to caramelise either in the oven or on the stove top. Once browned, add the tomato paste and cook for a couple of minutes before adding the red wine to deglaze using a wooden spoon. Reduce the red wine by half then tip all the contents of the tray into the stock pot along with the bones. Add the tyme and cover the ingredients by about 30cm of cold water. Gently bring to a simmer and skim as before. Simmer for about 6 hours, strain and chill. Store the stock in the fridge or freezer.

Classically, this stock can either be used as it is, or turned into Espagnole (a brown stock thickened with a brown roux and simmered with more mirepoix and herbs. This is one of Escoffiers 5 mother sauces). This Espagnol can then be mixed with brown veal/beef stock in a ratio of 1:1, then reduced by half in order to create a demi-glace. The Espagnole can also be made into Jus Lie, which is in effect a short cut to making a thick sauce like a demi-glace. All you do here is thiken the Espagnole further with more brown roux.

The demi-glace is the chefs secret weapon in the kitchen. It is the chefs flavour bomb responsible for a number of rich meaty sauces. These derivatives of brown stock all take a long time to prepare and leave you with what only seems a small amount in the end. However, if it is amazing flavour and texture you are after, I'm afraid you will just have to get on with it!!!

FISH STOCK (Fumet)

white fish bones

butter

leek

onion

garlic

white wine

bay leaf

parsley

Method to come shortly...

VEGETABLE STOCK (Nage)

leek

carrot

onion

celery

garlic

white peppercorns

star anise

fennel seeds

coriander seeds

chervil

Method to come shortly...

All of the above stocks can be used for sauce making. I said before that I tried using the roasted chicken stock for a reduced madeira sauce. The end result was extremely over powering in flavour, but the consistency was excellent. This is an example of a situation where you may reach the desired flavour before you have reduced the sauce far enough to reach the correct consistency. In this situation, thickening agents should be called upon. These come in the form of starches and fats. Common starch thickening agents are roux (cooked equal parts of plain flour to butter), buerre manie (basically an uncooked roux), cornflour and arrowroot. The first two are very classical methods of thickening liquids and they do the job well. However, in recent times, chefs have turned away from these flour based agents as the flour can taint the flavour of sauces and turn them cloudy. Cornflour also causes sauces to turn cloudy, whereas arrowroot does not. Add as much thikening agent as you require in order to obtain the desired consistency.