Making stock

I've been cooking for a decade and my stock is still awful
I used to have some really good Heston recipes but I lent the books out and haven't seen them since
so many methods are floating out there, but never any explanation of the pro's and cons

do you Blanche your carcasses and discard the water first?
I know it gives a much clearer stock, but I've heard a lot of other benefits touted that I'm not sure of

do you roast/grill your carcasses?
and it might sound like a silly question, but do you roast them before/after blanching if you both roast and blanche?

do you heat your vegetables in the pot, or just add them in raw?
at what stage would you add them?

do you skim the stock periodically as it cooks?
asians seem big on it, but some euro chefs I know say there is no real flavour benefit

I heard somewhere that pepper shouldn't be added at all, because its an aromatic sustained cooking destroys it

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recently I've been using lamb bones in stock, it's not common but I've had some great results; lamb has a much earthier flavour than beef
I use a lamb base for my northern chinese foods

still undecided on chicken kneck, it's cheap and nutritious; but the amount of gelatine in it is unreal
I end up with stock too gloopy for most things

1. Make a standard overnight stock with carcases, skim in the morning
2. Take 2kg of chicken wings, split all the bones and deep fry them
3. Put the wings on top of fresh mire poix and bouquet garnier add half a litre of white wine.
4. Add the chicken stock and cook on a low heat for another day, do not skim the fat.

Sat bains' recipients for a base Chicken sauce that can be used as a conc. Stock

i usually roast carcasses for dark stocks, although seeing as i use a pressure cooker i don't think it's necessary for chicken. with traditional stocks, yes i skim regularly. sweating off veg yields a different flavour to putting them in raw - it's not worse or better, just different.

>I heard somewhere that pepper shouldn't be added at all, because its an aromatic sustained cooking destroys it

this is true and equally true of many other spices, herbs and vegetables. pay attention to the volatility of your ingredients.

beef stock
youtu.be/cmWeaL2TNWs
chicken stock
youtu.be/TZ116DJrJtg

that doesn't make much sense

I add stock to the wings/veg?
so we already have stock before we start to make it?

I'm unsure about which herbs/spices can be added early
especially when making asian stock bases because I'm not as familiar with the spices

I said in the OP, there are hundreds of recipies
if you can't speak for the pro's and cons of what you are posting thenthowing another set of instructions out there is only going to be helpful for amateurs

keeping the ingredients under a strainer works well though

>do you Blanche your carcasses and discard the water first?
Only in the case of Tonkotsu/baitang broth. The only reason I do that is if you don't blanch for these stocks the result will have an unpleasant grayish color. Otherwise I haven't noticed a difference.

>I know it gives a much clearer stock, but I've heard a lot of other benefits touted that I'm not sure of
It reduces scum formation, but that's such a minor thing I don't think it's worth worrying about.

>do you roast/grill your carcasses?
That's a matter of preferance. Roasted carcasses make "dark" stock. Un-roasted make "white" stocks. They're different ingredients for different applications.

>and it might sound like a silly question, but do you roast them before/after blanching if you both roast and blanche?
I've never heard of blanching roasted carcasses. AFIK blanching is only done with un-roasted (aka white) stocks.

>do you heat your vegetables in the pot, or just add them in raw?
Raw

>at what stage would you add them?
Depends on the stock. The veggies, when cut fine, take a couple hours to get the flavor out. So they get added a couple hours before the stock would be done. That means for a poultry stock they go in right away. For a beef stock--which has a much longer cooking time--they go in near the end.

>do you skim the stock periodically as it cooks?
Yes, but mainly because I'm OCD about it. It doesn't matter if you constantly skim or you skim it all at the end.

>I heard somewhere that pepper shouldn't be added at all, because its an aromatic sustained cooking destroys it
I don't think that's true. I've added pepper to stocks many times and the flavor is obvious.

>I said in the OP, there are hundreds of recipies

In my experience these are all minor variations on the same theme. I have a massive cookbook collection and pretty much every stock recipe follows this same basic formula. The only significant outlier I can think of is David Chang's ramen stock, and Japanese dashi.

8 lbs/ 4 kg bones & meaty scraps, roasted if you want to make a dark stock.
1 lb aromatic vegetables (mirepoix)
6 quarts/liters of cold water
Optional: herbs or spices
Put in stockpot, bring to a gentle simmer.

8-12 hours for beef
3 hours for poultry
1 hour for fish or shellfish

95% of stock recipes out there will be some minor variation of that. Personally I prefer to make my stocks un-seasoned. I don't use any herbs or spices in them and put those into the finished dish instead. That way the stock is more flexible in its use.

>still undecided on chicken kneck, it's cheap and nutritious; but the amount of gelatine in it is unreal

Yeah, as it is supposed to be!

>I end up with stock too gloopy for most things
I'm curious what you find the stock too gloopy for. That's a problem I've never encountered, ever.

neat, thanks user

....continued.

Chinese stocks are made pretty much the same way as the western formula I just posted. The difference is in the choice of aromatics, but the ratios and the method are largely the same. Instead of onion, carrot, and celery you see ginger and green onions.

Japanese Dashi is a bit of a different beast. To make that you steep Konbu seaweed in hot (but not boiling) water for around 30-45 min. If you boil the Konbu it will taste and smell like low tide. Nasty. Remove the konbu and discard it. Then dump a generous quantity of katsuobushi into the pot. Ideally, there should be so much of it that you could stand a pair of chopsticks in the pot and have them not fall over, but in practice that's only done at fancy restaurants because of the price. Leave the katsuobushi in there for a short time--maybe 2-3 min, then strain.

>>do you heat your vegetables in the pot, or just add them in raw?
>Raw

Let me clarify that a bit! I, personally, usually put my veg in raw. But if you were making a dark stock and you really wanted to emphasize the "roasted" flavor then you could roast the veggies in the oven at the same time that you're roasting the meat. I rarely bother to do it because the majority of the roasted flavor comes from roasting the bones/meat.

...continued again

Tonkotsu broth, popular for Ramen, is the Japanese name for the Chinese "baitang" stock. It's rather unique as it's the only stock that I know of which is deliberately cooked at a full-on boil rather than the usually desired gentle simmer.

Take pork bones and skin, soak them in several changes of cold water and rinse well. Put them in a pot, top up with cold water, bring to a boil. Simmer 10 minutes then discard the water. Rinse the bones again under running water. You want to get rid of all the blood otherwise it will make the soup have an unpleasant color.

Now add the pork bones back to the pot, add cold water, and bring to a full-on rolling boil. Keep it there for hours, topping up the water as it boils down. Season after cooking.

The key to good stock is never let it boil.

>I, personally,
You don't say.

>I've been cooking for a decade and my stock is still awful
you're not supposed to cook it for that long

the top 50% of my stock was half way to aspic, it would have been fine for risotto or something but I was making a clear soup and it was unapetising to say the least

I think it was a combination of mild over-reducing, and the way I do the carcas

I generally roast it, then crush each chicken between two chopping boards, it breaks a lot of the bones and you get more gelatine from between the joints

at least that is my experiance, albiet limited

>don't boil konbu
shit I remember the time I found that out the hard way

>mfw

Here's what I do:

Break down a whole chicken. Peel an onion, carrot, celery, etc. Keep only the most gorgeous pieces. Carrots taper on one end, so I try to find where the tapering begins and cut there. That way all my carrot slices are the same diameter. Uniformity = beauty. That goes into the finished soup. Add all the scraps to the pot along with the back, neck, and wing tips. Bay leaf, peppercorns, slightly crushed clove of garlic, thyme, and parsley. Some people think bay leaf smells medicinal, but I don't. I think chicken broth reeks of chicken. The broth should be strongly aromatic like tea. Aromatics to chicken parts should be like 4:1. Load that fucker down with thyme and garlic. Once you've strained the stock and are left with the final volume, add salt and turmeric.

I like you

Stock isn't ever going to be mindblowing. It's just a starter for much better things. You may just be expecting too much out of it to be honest

anyone care to weigh in on "essence stocks"

found some recipies that call for just heating your chicken/veg, female ginseng, red dates, and some other herbs I can't even find on google in a sealed container

apparently you end up with just the sweat, but I'm not sure how you use it

it's interesnting because you can use prime cuts of chicken as well, because it's not broken down by the process
apparently it's the better way all around to steam chicken

Just wanted to say that I have quite some respect for the people who put the time and effort into making their own stock

>time and effort
It's easy. Roast chicken. eat chicken. throw bones in a pot with water and slap it into a 180 degree oven overnight. Add veg/aromatics in the last hour.

wala.

>I said in the OP, there are hundreds of recipes if you can't speak for the pro's and cons of what you are posting thenthowing another set of instructions out there is only going to be helpful for amateurs

just watch them you weenie, it's not just instructions, Greg easter always gives professional reasoning behind his methods. people don't speak of the pros and cons because it's all subjective minor variations that cater to the dishes they frequently make. They just say doing "this method" will achieve "that flavor" and why this is better for "X dish". The major differences are in comparing stocks by different world regions.

this

...

There are two things that I've heard of which that could be?

The first is what the French would call a "fumet", often translated as "essence" in various cookbooks. It's made like any other stock, just with a very short cooking time. It's meant to be very light in flavor.

The other is a Chinese method where the veg and meat are put into a lidded container which then goes into a steamer. That sounds like what you're describing given the ingredients. But I've never done it, sorry.

I dunno, the broth you get off making Hainanese chicken rice is pretty insane. I make regular stock plenty and I'd tend to agree it's nothing special on its own, but there's something about that particular dish that makes it absolutely glorious.

true
unless you're making some fucking ramen broth you've been perfecting for 8 years it's not a 'main dish' for anything

Sure, it's not a "main dish" but I think it's easy to underestimate how much of an impact stock can have on your cooking.

For the obvious uses like soups and stews the homemade stuff is much tastier and has a better texture than that provided by bullion cubes.

Beyond that, it's super useful to make sauces and reductions. It can add a ton of flavor to other foods when used as a poaching liquid.

>broth you get off making Hainanese chicken rice is pretty insane
That's a "master stock", right? Where the same stock is used over and over again to poach the chicken? That stuff is god-tier. I have a dark master stock that I've been using for about 5 years now, cooking pork & various kinds of poultry. Absolutely amazing.