Food

Stock. It's another one of those vastly underrated and marginalised kitchen skills. And yet it's the key to some truly awesome cooking, and it is again an incredibly studly thing to be able to make. And since I've got a batch simmering right now, I reckon it's a good time to write about it.

For those raised on stock cubes (and believe me, my shelf used to hold every colour of Oxo available), stock is just another flavouring for meat, or it's gravy. But once you've discovered the joy and power of real stock, you'll see what an extraordinary thing it is.

When we cook, we use a whole bunch of different additives, of varying artificiality - salt and pepper, bay leaves, vinegar, 5-spice, whatever - to alter and enhance the flavour of our dishes. Each has it's own characteristics of sweetness, saltiness, aroma, sharpness, and so on. But stock is like the condensed essence of a whole load of beautiful flavours, all in a compact little package (an ice cube, if like me you freeze it). To make stock, you extract the flavour out of a bunch of good-tasting things, concentrate it down and then have it ready to add to your own recipes. So when you make a great tasting stew with a variety of ingredients, and then throw in one of your stock cubes to boost it a little, it's like you just added the best of a dozen ingredients in one go. That's why it's exciting.

The key to great stock is the Three Holy Vegetables - celery, carrots and onion. Carrots for sweet veggieness, onion for that magical combination of sweetness, sharpness and aroma, and celery for magic - those of you who think of celery as a boring salad vegetable might like to know that it contains large amounts of a natural flavour enhancer very similar to the much maligned monosodium glutamate (but without the headaches - if they exist at all.) Tomatoes have some of it too.

I'll post two quick guides here, one for a veg and one for beef stock - they're my two most common ones. I used to make chicken stock too, but sadly my local butchers buy in ready-boned chicken at the moment, so they don't have bones lying around. For beef bones, however, they're wonderful. You just have to get over the fact that they're outside in a box marked "for pets". I pay 50p a bag, if I remember right, and two bags is more than enough for my stockpot. All the amounts are rough, you can play around with them to your heart's content and experiment with additional flavour enhancements and adjustments.

Vegetable Stock (what I'm making today)

• 8 carrots (all about 6-8 inches long), peeled and with the top and bottom cut off.
• 2 large onions (1 would probably be enough), peeled and roughly chopped.
• A bunch of celery (about 10 stalks), washed and roughly chopped.
• Most of a head of garlic, peeled and flattened with the side of a knife
• A couple of tablespoons of tomato paste - not essential but it all helps boost the flavour.
• 2 bay leaves
• 12 black peppercorns
• A handful of fresh thyme and one of basil (my windowsill herbs were looking a bit uppity so I trimmed them a bit and threw these in, they're not essential but everything adds to the flavour).

All the vegetables should be sauteed for a few minutes, until the carrot and onion are a bit browned and the celery has wilted - this brings out the sweetness of the veggies. Then sling everything into a big stockpot (they're suprisingly cheap - I think mine was a fiver), add enough water to cover and let them simmer for 2-3 hours. It's important that you don't let them boil - the heat should be enough that the occasional bubble rises to the surface, but no more. Fast boiling leaches things out of the veggies that you don't want and eventually shreds them into the liquid as a pulp, which can cause a muddy or sulphurous taste (so I'm told from reliable sources - I've always been careful). After the time's up strain all the solid things out of the stock with something like a sieve, and ideally strain again through muslin or an equivalent (I use a J-cloth which has been boiled to take the faint perfume out). Then boil the liquid hard (it's okay now there are no solids in it) until it reduces down to a thick rich fluid. There should be about enough to fill one and a half ice-cube trays, or a little less. The reduction concentrates all the flavours, and the taste should be dynamite!

WARNING: Don't add salt until your stock is fully reduced. If you add it earlier, it will be unbearably salty once it's reduced.

Vegetable stock can go into practically anything. I recommend adding it to bolognaise and other pasta sauces, soups, stews, anything with a complex rich flavour can benefit.

Beef Stock

• Enough beef bones to fill your stockpot to the top (ask your butcher to break them up a bit if they're too big. I usually get them to fit as they are and I always forget to check before I get them home!)
• 4 carrots (all about 6-8 inches long), peeled and with the top and bottom cut off.
• 1 large onion, peeled and roughly chopped.
• About 4 stalks of celery, washed and roughly chopped.
• 12 black peppercorns
• A couple of tablespoons of tomato paste - not essential but it all helps boost the flavour.

You have a choice here - for a brown stock, first roast the bones in the oven. Do it at about 200 degrees (gas mark 6 I think), and keep a careful eye on them and turn them a few times - make sure they're good and browned but don't burn them black anywhere or they'll add a bitter taste. Also sautee the veggies as above. For a white stock just wash everything and put it in the pot. The only real advantage of a white stock is appearance and, some say, a clearer, cleaner taste (honestly my palate isn't up to telling the difference), so for most people's purposes a brown stock is better - it has a richer, sweeter and more powerful flavour.

Once all the ingredients are in the pot, add enough water to cover (if you've used plenty of bones that should be pretty much up to the rim), and simmer on a low low heat, just as with the veg stock - just the odd bubble rising. This is even more important with bones in there, as fast boiling will leach out bitter tasting chemicals. For the first hour or so you'll want to skim the surface occasionally as a grey scum and a layer of fat will accumulate there which will affect the flavour a bit. Beef stock needs about 7-8 hours simmering before you strain and reduce it. Again, it should make about an ice cube tray and a half of very rich stock to freeze. Again, don't add salt until it's fully reduced, if you add any at all - you can always add salt to the finished product anyway.

Beef stock is a bit more limited than veggie - it's pretty powerfully beefy, so it should only go with things that are complemented by that flavour. Chicken is a better all-purpose meat stock, frankly, I just don't have the means at the moment. When I do I'll post a recipe, or for now you can look to the links. Obviously beef stews, pies, etc. are ideal to gain from this stock, but some sauces (a chinese soy-sauce-based sauce for example) benefit surprisingly well from it. Or you can just melt one or two cubes in boiling water and voila! A simple consomme. All French and professional etc. Just tune up the flavour with salt until the beefiness leaps out at you - it'll taste a little bland until you get the salt just right. Just don't overshoot and end up with something like beefy seawater.

The exciting thing about stock, if you're learning about food, is that it teaches your palate. A common characteristic of real quality food versus cheap processed stuff is that the flavours are more subtle, but more complex. A Ginsters pasty or an Iceland chicken wing leap on your tastebuds with the full force of artificial flavours and flavour enhancers, and that can seem pleasurable, but it's a crude taste experience. A soup made with real stock is milder, but the flavours gradually emerge as you move it around your mouth - you can really taste all the ingredients concentrated down into the food, but they're subtle and don't all emerge at once. Cooking with stock has helped me no end in developing my own palate, and it's a really fun way to expand your cooking repertoire. Initially it can seem like it takes up a long time, but once you get over your initial paranoid check-it-every-five-minutes period, it can be prepped in a matter of minutes, monitored occasionally for the first hour if it's got meat in it, then just left to mind itself for the rest of the time. I'll happily go out shopping for an hour while my stock simmers. So it's not all that hard, really...

Labels: Cook, Stock, Taste