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Lost in the Stock

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Re: Lost in the Stock

#21

Post by joshspankit »

ginko wrote: post #19
unglaublich wrote: post #6

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.

I suspect that the aftertaste is one of the selling features for brands: if you take a bite, enjoy it, and then an aftertaste tries to settle in, you might be likely to go for another bite to cover it up and repeat that until the product is gone and you want more.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#22

Post by adingus »

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.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#24

Post by fwlr »

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 participants agree reminds them of chicken stock. But restaurants have the manpower, facilities, and quantity of ingredients to make a lot of stocks and sauces from scratch and iterate on the recipe and process until it’s really good. (Once you get to about five chefs in the kitchen brigade you start to see the position of saucier, a chef whose job is just preparing sauces.) If the menu mentions soup, broth, stock, jus, or demi-glace I make a beeline for it and I’m usually in for a treat.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#25

Post by vgel »

Interesting--I didn't know why the first ingredient is listed as broth--but the doom and gloom attitude was a bit much. E.g.:

```quote

As Moss pointed out, even the FDA-mandated nutrition facts box that has appeared on most packaged food since the ’90s “was conceived by none other than the food industry itself as a way of placating us.” Back in the ’70s, he explained, consumer advocate Ralph Nader was talking “really loudly and publicly about the evil-sounding” chemicals that the food industry was feeding to unknowing consumers. “As a way of countering that attack, [they figured] why don’t we disclose lots of stuff on the labels of packages and if we do so, people will feel comforted by the idea that the government is keeping track and it must be okay,” Moss said. “What I thought was our friend was in fact a conceit of the industry to lull us into complacency.”

```

Alternative read: activist makes a stink about a bad industry practice and industry self-regulates an effective response that helps the situation significantly. Is it perfect? Of course not, but my understanding is that the US has some of the strongest food labeling regulations in the world (similar to the EU's, much better than e.g. China) and they're being continuously tweaked to be better. As a consumer I can look at a food label and see basically everything that's in it that I care about, e.g. HFCS, and that means customer preferences drive company behavior. What this article sees as crass language about "good labeling" from the chicken concentrate manufacturers, I see as evidence that food labels work to change corporate behavior. If there were no food labeling laws who's to say that store-bought chicken stock would have any chicken in it at all?

Maybe I just have more of a stomach for industrial food production? I mean I make homemade stock and it's delicious and in a different league than anything from the store, but sometimes a meal needs some chicken water and you have nothing in the freezer, you know? It's not so bad. If we want to talk about store-bought crimes against the culinary arts let's talk about store-bought bread.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#26

Post by nerdponx »

adingus wrote: post #22

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.

The cruelty and horror of industrialized farming wouldn't be possible without this level of detachment.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#27

Post by nerdponx »

skilled wrote: post #14

Eater is making an interesting choice with its cookie policy. It doesn't matter if you click Accept (the only option!) or not, it will still load the TikTok video, a platform that's well-known for its notorious tracking. "By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies." Is Eater able to make an exception for TikTok in this context? At least for the news sites that I consume, t…

Of course they don't care. What makes you think they would care?

Re: Lost in the Stock

#28

Post by nerdponx »

madaxe_again wrote: post #5
MikeDelta wrote: post #2

> 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.…

Several brands sell it in the USA now as well.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#29

Post by nerdponx »

antihipocrat wrote: post #4
MikeDelta wrote: post #2

> 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.

Or just sell it as a frozen good. Even the author mentioned freezing homemade stock for later use.

They do both now. It's just not as popular because Americans have no idea what they're missing.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#30

Post by andreareina »

adingus wrote: post #22

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.

Because it isn't just bone, there's a lot of skin and other connective tissue that goes along for the ride. I've parted out whole chickens so I wouldn't call me disconnected from the reality of it and calling it the frame makes perfect sense to me. "Carcass" is another word that's in common use.
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