31–40 of 99 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does well-made stock actually have significant nutrition in it? Serious question.
Yes, per the article -- the reason store-bought stock (minimum water-to-protein ratio 1:135) never reduces to a gelatin (like homemade) is that the homemade has Much higher protein content. It's hard to know what other dimensions of healthiness apply to homemade over store bought.
These stocks are just yeast extract water for taste with chicken residues for marketing. Yeast extract (or MSG, or e621) is the cornerstone of modern processed food. It replaces expensive processes and products aimed at improving taste with a cheap additive that attempts to approximate the traditional taste. Soups, meat products, stocks, potato chips, snacks, sauces, anything that's supposed to have an extravagant ta…
Of your last line, this sounds like an absolute win-win, right?
These stocks are just yeast extract water for taste with chicken residues for marketing. Yeast extract (or MSG, or e621) is the cornerstone of modern processed food. It replaces expensive processes and products aimed at improving taste with a cheap additive that attempts to approximate the traditional taste. Soups, meat products, stocks, potato chips, snacks, sauces, anything that's supposed to have an extravagant ta…
I despise yeast extract. It leaves a noticeable aftertaste in my mouth that won't go away for hours. I'd much prefer if brands just stuck with MSG but for some reason every single type of chips other than plain salt is adding yeast extract around here.
If I had to summarize what I thought of this article in one sentence I'd grab this quote: ""Raw material (chicken frames) are cooked in water to specific solids content,” the representative wrote.” The the product, the rep and the company are so disconnected from reality that they can't even call a chicken bone a "chicken bone". They call it a "chicken frame", like some strange chicken nugget defecating robot.
This was so well written I wish everyone producing similar content would study it and learn from it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, per the article -- the reason store-bought stock (minimum water-to-protein ratio 1:135) never reduces to a gelatin (like homemade) is that the homemade has Much higher protein content. It's hard to know what other dimensions of healthiness apply to homemade over store bought.
The reason you care about the protein is completely unrelated to nutrition, though. Rather, it's because of the flavour and mouth feel.
> If manufacturers were truly making chicken stock “just like your grandma did,” it would be highly perishable, incredibly expensive, and shelf-unstable. I wonder why grandma's chicken stock would not be shelf-stable using old or modern food-preservation techniques.
It is. We can it in mason jars at home. The fat floats to the top and solidifies, so even if the seal on the (sterilised!) jar is imperfect, the fat preserves the broth by preventing microbe incursion. Also helps to make it good and salty, and concentrate it down until it just begins (while boiling hot) to be viscous. When cool, it’s thick and gloopy. So long as everything is good and hot when you seal, you’re good.…
Good, maybe. Safe, no. Chicken stock is not acidic enough even for water-bath canning – it must be pressure-canned. Anything else is a risk of botulism.
And of course they should refuse to enforce any NDA that bears on any of that.
Trade secrets are purely destructive, even from a "free market" perspective. Asymmetric information always makes markets less efficient. They should not be tolerated, let alone given any legal protection. You want to protect something, get a patent (which should still be harder to do than it is today).
Unfortunately it would require global coordination, because markets (and businesspeople) would punish the first mover, just as markets punish any individual player who doesn't play the secrecy game. So I'm not exactly holding my breath, especially because people in business are so used to playing in the secrecy system that they can't imagine competing any other way.
Restaurants are in the sweet spot of the economy of scale when it comes to things like sauces and stocks. Households can be a bit too small; making chicken stock is practical, but not effortless. Commercial processed food corporations on the other hand are too big; they can afford to formulate a witch’s brew of Flavoring 31A, Refined Extract Concentrate, and Butylated Hydroxysorbate that 9 out of 10 focus group parti…
It's nowhere near as good as the real deal, but it provides a great effort to value ratio.
Reason number 47,000,000,036 that governments worldwide should require total public disclosure of everything material to how anything sold to the public is made... including not just what ALL of the ingredients are, but their relative quantities, where they're sourced from, every detail of how they're processed, results of any quality or characterization tests, and any and all existing internal documentation of WHY a…