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‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

atlasobscura.com

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Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#131

Post by twelve40 »

VLM wrote: post #125

In the long run, you would likely have metal corrosion issues. Everything eventually dissolves, at least a little, it just takes a long time. Heat and moisture "forever" is a rough environment for metal. Consider metal parts dipped in a tropical ocean for decades, or the parts inside a nuclear reactor or steam plant. This is probably why you tend to hear about pH neutral broths and such instead of perpetual lemonade…

surely it's trivial to swap pots/cauldrons once in a while? the point is to keep the broth, not the cauldron

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#132

Post by an_aparallel »

one of my favorite things to drink is the broth you get at a good chinese bbq pork/roast duck joint. Usually consisting of pork bones, chicken feet, roasted chicken and duck carcasses, corn cobs, carrots (and occasionally tomato, peanuts, jujubes and black eyed peas) really rich stock, absolute comfort.

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#133

Post by vram22 »

dekhn wrote: post #78
inetknght wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> well... actually we purge it once a week otherwise it goes completely bad I know that when I cook stews I often end up with a lot of food bits stuck and eventually burned at the bottom and sides of the pot. I can imagine keeping it going by pouring the stew contents to another pot so that I could clean the first pot though. Without doing that... those stuck & burned bits will certainly add "flavor" to the stew.

This stuff is known as "fond" and it's commonly used to make flavorful liquids (stock/broth).

Wonder if the word fondue is related to fond.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fondue

I first read about fondue in Asterix in Switzerland (IIRC). Good fon(due)!

#PunIntended

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#134

Post by taneq »

sklargh wrote: post #24
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

Kind of related to this is the concept of "Brunswick Stew." Look it up if you want a more accurate description, but as I recall, the idea from Colonial times in America is that there'd be a tavern/inn with a fire, constantly running, and a big cauldron of stew always topped off and ready for weary travelers. The idea is that they never "finished" a batch. They just perpetually added leftovers and foods that were at r…

Came here to make a Ship-of-Theseus dad joke, beaten throughly to the punch.

It’s ok, just add a bit more orange juice or whatever. ;)

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#135

Post by taneq »

scandox wrote: post #79
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

Kind of related to this is the concept of "Brunswick Stew." Look it up if you want a more accurate description, but as I recall, the idea from Colonial times in America is that there'd be a tavern/inn with a fire, constantly running, and a big cauldron of stew always topped off and ready for weary travelers. The idea is that they never "finished" a batch. They just perpetually added leftovers and foods that were at r…

We had a salad like that for a while but I think it was in danger of becoming a serious health risk after a week or so.

Yeah, you can only do it with hot foods that are effectively being constantly sterilised.

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#136

Post by taneq »

hinkley wrote: post #126
khuey wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect a lot of long-running things are lost to wars or big natural disasters.

As a tavern owner, one might be prone to neutrality. One king is as good as another, as long as they leave you alone. In dramatizations of wars we always see an army taking over a village and sucking it dry, but I suspect there would be some overlap of tavern locations and 'tactically bad places to get caught by the enemy', such that the officers might volunteer you for a free meal and then move on before enemy scout…

I’d imagine natural selection plays a part. Eventually after all the taverns in dangerous (for taverns, not individual humans) locations are ransacked, the site of locations the survivors were built in will enter the zeitgeist as “This seems like a good spot for a tavern.”

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#137

Post by bobthepanda »

curiousllama wrote: post #118
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had it personally, but one of my SO's tried a famous "perpetual stew" when in France and we talked about it at one point. Her description kinda matched what I'd expect from braises that I've let go to long: you end up with bland mush. I think there's a reason very few restaurants serve this style of dish, and it's not because of health codes. We live in an era of insane abundance compared to the medeivil an…

I've always thought of it more as a way to conserve the calories that food represent, rather than a delicious dish in its own right

It can preserve flavor, but it becomes concentrated as the water evaporates away, so i wouldn’t say you should ever grab a bowl of just that.

Master stocks are used as a base in Chinese cooking the same way a lot of recipes already start from a stock; but it is rarer and rarer for home cooks to make stock from scratch and not just use a box from the store in the US. I have a lot of friends that categorically do not cook meat with bones in it. The Chinese one is also different from hunters’ stew in that it is a specific soup used as a base for future versions of said specific soup

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#138

Post by sowbug »

mgc_mgc wrote: post #67
pazimzadeh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spores will survive boiling, that's why autoclaves (pressure cookers) are used in medical research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave . But spores are in a state of dormancy, so if you never stop boiling the broth, then spores never grow into anything. The most dangerous thing would probably be to boil the broth in stops in starts

Depending on the circumstances, boiling in stops and starts may not be too bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyndallization

I've heard from a friend of a friend that mycologists soak their grow mediums for a day or two to give spores a chance to germinate before pressure-cooking the whole thing. But said friend never called it Tyndallization. That's the thing I learned today!

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#139

Post by burritas »

candyman wrote: post #6

I also like the "forever bottle" that is common with bourbon lovers like me. You take one of your nicer bottles and when another one is close to empty you don't finish it but instead dump it into a "forever bottle" that keeps evolving with the different leftover bourbons you pour into it.

Sorry, leftover bourbon?

Re: ‘Perpetual broths’ that simmer for decades

#140

Post by neilv »

I used to routinely eat "glop" that evolved over about a week each time.

I started it the first day with some vegetarian rice or pasta concoction on the stove, served some, put the pan in the fridge, took it out the next day, added some ingredient (usually by sniffing it, and imagining what flavor would be good to add), cooked on stove again, repeat.

It usually ran out in about a week. It tended to taste better closer to the end of its lifecycle, but this was irreproducible -- I didn't keep notes, nor plan, because this was improvisational art, not engineering/science.

One day, I was telling a new roommate about my lazy improvisational cooking, and she mentioned her grandmother died from "that", so I stopped. Even if there wasn't a bad association, I'd have to learn about food safety, to be coloring outside the lines like that, which would be too much like work.

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