There are any number of axioms in the culinary world. Brown meat on all sides to develop the best flavor. Let cooked meat rest for a few minutes before slicing to allow juices to redistribute. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. But perhaps the most fundamental axiom is that cooking with homemade stock is infinitely better than using canned broth or bouillon. I'm a busy guy-- I've got 100 hours of Tivo'd television to watch, after all-- so I've always made do with Better Than Bouillon brand concentrated chicken base. The same brand's beef base won Cook's Illustrated's commerical broth taste test, beating out canned broths, and come on-- it says it's better than bouillon right there on the label. And the results I've gotten have been completely satisfactory, and mighty convenient. Still, magazine after cookbook after television show kept touting the virtues of homemade stock. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping.
Then I stumbled onto EGullet-- and incidentally, you're all on my shit list for not bringing this site to my attention sooner-- and more specifically, their EGullet Culinary Institute. Which is really a fancy schmancy name of a series of online cooking lessons, all of which are archived for posterity. Which reminds me, henceforth Static Zombie shall be known as the Static Zombie Procrastination Institute. I'll post lesson one tomorrow.
The very first lesson on EGullet? Cooking your own stock. I read through it and was inspired by the apparent simplicity of it all. Photographs documented the process, and a Q&A session offered testimonials from many first-time stock-makers. My interest was piqued, but I always buy packages of chicken breasts instead of whole chickens, so I never have necks and backs and other meaty bones to use for making stock. What got me off the fence was the lesson's suggestion to just buy a couple of chickens, and when they're fully cooked about 40 minutes into the process you can fish out the birds, strip the perfectly poached breast meat right off the bones for consumption, and then return the carcass to the pot.
Sold.
Fast forward a couple of days, and I've got stock. About 1.5 quarts of the gelatinous stuff, frozen in 1 oz cubes and 1/3 cup muffins. And I've got a great curried chicken salad from the breast meat, and chicken quesadillas from the mostly-spent-but-still-good-for-quesadillas meat from the rest of the carcass. And it really wasn't that much work.
Is it better than Better Than Bouillon? I dunno-- I haven't made anything with it yet. But it feels like I've unlocked a secret cooking level. Now I just need to discover the finishing move.
Posted by Peter at December 21, 2004 2:00 AM