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Lost in the Stock

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Re: Lost in the Stock

#41

Post by 13of40 »

chrisoverzero wrote: post #37
madaxe_again wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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.

What you said got me wondering about whether you could fix that by adding some vinegar, which led me to this interesting article: https://www.clemson.edu/extension/food/canning/canning-tips/...

Tl;dr your canned food can get a fungus that eats the vinegar, reducing the acidity, and allowing botulinum to grow.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#42

Post by guessbest »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #20
Havoc wrote: post #9

I've found a strategy that works well for home use: Freeze meat offcuts etc over time. Nuke accumulated stuff in pressure cooker every couple weeks, pour into a ice cube tray & freeze. Especially useful for a flexitarian diet. The days where the main protein is say beans adding one of the above beef based cube helps give it a bit more complexity

I've normally found that you want to strain and cool it first, as otherwise you end up with a layer of fat in your stock, which tends to not be as nice.

I pull the layer of fat off the top after I cool down the chicken stock and it looks as rich and creamy as butter but with a slight chicken flavor. Some people call it schmaltz. It makes a great coating for a copper pan when cooking scrambled eggs or really anything pan fried.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#43

Post by Graziano_M »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #20
Havoc wrote: post #9

I've found a strategy that works well for home use: Freeze meat offcuts etc over time. Nuke accumulated stuff in pressure cooker every couple weeks, pour into a ice cube tray & freeze. Especially useful for a flexitarian diet. The days where the main protein is say beans adding one of the above beef based cube helps give it a bit more complexity

I've normally found that you want to strain and cool it first, as otherwise you end up with a layer of fat in your stock, which tends to not be as nice.

What I do is cool down in the fridge over night, skim the solidified fat, and then freeze. I'll often get a portion of the skimmed stock and reduce it to a demi glace before freezing, often just to save space in the freezer, since I try to make at least a gallon at a time.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#44

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

Graziano_M wrote: post #43
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've normally found that you want to strain and cool it first, as otherwise you end up with a layer of fat in your stock, which tends to not be as nice.

What I do is cool down in the fridge over night, skim the solidified fat, and then freeze. I'll often get a portion of the skimmed stock and reduce it to a demi glace before freezing, often just to save space in the freezer, since I try to make at least a gallon at a time.

Yeah, that's generally my approach. Definitely don't freeze it in freezer bags though, as they stick together making it difficult to use it in the intended amounts.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#45

Post by madaxe_again »

chrisoverzero wrote: post #37
madaxe_again wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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 this is why my wife is in charge of canning - yes, these go through the pressure cooker, and I should probably have mentioned that!

Re: Lost in the Stock

#46

Post by wcedmisten »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #35
ergonaught wrote: post #23

This was so well written I wish everyone producing similar content would study it and learn from it.

I’m really not a fan of even long form reporting bringing the author into the story so much. It feels very much an artifact of this generation of reporters who seek celebrity as much as (more than?) telling an informative and neutral story.

Personally I felt more engaged with the story due to its narrative style.

A lot of the corporate responses wouldn't have as much impact if they were stated more neutrally like "These 3 stock manufacturers declined to comment", or just providing their nonanswers sequentially.

The author's bio also describes him as "chef, author and host of the YouTube cooking show Don’t Panic Pantry", so I think the style is more appropriate here than it would be written by a professional journalist on a more strictly "news" site.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#47

Post by mrmekon »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #35
ergonaught wrote: post #23

This was so well written I wish everyone producing similar content would study it and learn from it.

I’m really not a fan of even long form reporting bringing the author into the story so much. It feels very much an artifact of this generation of reporters who seek celebrity as much as (more than?) telling an informative and neutral story.

I'm sure it has increased over time as people imitate their heroes, but first-person journalism is certainly not at all unique to "this generation"; it was already a big element of New Journalism in the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Journalism

Is it surprising that journalists who grow up reading Hunter Thompson go on to write like Hunter Thompson? I think that's a pretty natural progression, without needing to blame generational narcissism. If anything, it seems like World War II was the major turning point for involving the author into the story.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#48

Post by wpm »

jghn wrote: post #39
fwlr wrote: post #24

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…

One thing that changed the dynamic for me was adding gelatin to store bought stock. I think I originally got that tip from Kenji (who was quoted in the article). If not it was definitely from Serious Eats. It's nowhere near as good as the real deal, but it provides a great effort to value ratio.

Yeah the gelatin trick is huge. Store-bought stock/broth does a decent job of tasting like real chicken stock, and then the added gelatin does a decent job of feeling like real chicken stock.

It's as close to the real deal as it is probably worth to the home cook. I recently made a huge batch of beef stock and turkey stock over the same two days. After skimming the fat, all the filtering, heating and cooling, and portioning, then freezing, I hit me that while this stock is damn good, I had spent an absolute shitton of money, burned a bunch of fossil fuels, spent a bunch of electricity, and a lot of time, for a couple quarts of stock. A quart of kitchen basics low sodium and two packets of Knox gelatin get me 80% of the way there for fractions of the cost and time.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#49

Post by wpm »

Hizonner wrote: post #38

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…

There should at least be a way for me to punch in a UPC or some other product code and see exactly where all of the ingredients came from. The author had to go through a lot of effort and hoops just to kinda sorta confirm that these brands are using concentrate and from one of three major players. I don't need to know ratios or recipes, just tell me who touched the shit in this carton.

Re: Lost in the Stock

#50

Post by ac29 »

Havoc wrote: post #9

I've found a strategy that works well for home use: Freeze meat offcuts etc over time. Nuke accumulated stuff in pressure cooker every couple weeks, pour into a ice cube tray & freeze. Especially useful for a flexitarian diet. The days where the main protein is say beans adding one of the above beef based cube helps give it a bit more complexity

I do this too - buying whole chickens is generally half the price/lb of individual cuts, and you get the leftover bones/etc to make proper stock.
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