/ssmg/ - Stock & Sauce Making General #2

[Anonymous No.18792398]

Discuss Stock & Sauce Making. Can't buy it in the stores & use more meat edition.

[Anonymous No.18792511]

for beef stock i like to use top round, beef shanks, and beef neck bones. Sometimes only one of those. And when I use top round i take it out before it gets over cooked so i can actually eat it as leftovers another day or something. I like to make sandwiches with top round beef.

Oh and I make vegetable paste/bouillon instead of vegetable stock. instead of boiling veggies in water and draining out the veggies, i use the veggies themselves as the "stock".
I just peel and cut up a whole bunch of my favorite vegetables (onion, carrots, celery, shallot, red bell pepper, parsnip, tomato, ect) cooking them in a covered pot/pan with only a small amount of water on the bottom to jumpstart creating steam on the inside, and i let them cook in the steam created by the vegetables own water until they've all cooked and collapsed being careful to make sure nothing burns on the bottom. Then i keep cooking them uncovered to evaporate more water out of the vegetables until the vegetable mass i started out with shrinks down to like a quarter of what it was. You can mash them, blend them, food process them, or puree them if you want at this stage. All the flavors concentrate and you end up with something that tastes more like sweet candy than vegetables. It's pretty crazy. You can portion and freeze the paste to use in soups and sauces later. They're not as potent and concentrated as store-bought stock bouillon, but they taste better and they still have their fiber with no bullshit ingredients.

[Anonymous No.18792690]

>>18792511
so, roasting with extra steps. got it.

[Anonymous No.18792725]

>>18792690
it's steam-cooking on the stove, then reducing the solids in the pan really far by evaporating more and more water out of the vegetables.

roasting would be if i cooked them in the oven until just brown or tender, then removing.

[Anonymous No.18793179]

>>18792511
Isn't that just using a vegetable puree as a thickener? I think I've seen sauces that are thickened by mashing up the mirepoix you put in as well.

[Anonymous No.18793401]

Is there an optimal size to cut the bones and meat for making a stock? I feel a little worried about asking the butcher to cut the bones smaller, it seems like it'd be hard to do myself though.

[Anonymous No.18794214]

>>18792511
So how long does it take you to do all that veg stock routine from start to finish and how much does it give you in the end? And do you add anything else like herbs or whatever or just straight up veggies?

[Anonymous No.18795007]

>>18792398
Whoa, I didn't even see her there is she wondering if he washed the chicken before making that stock?

[Anonymous No.18795461]

>>18793401
Just get yourself a cleaver. The more marrow that is exposed the more collagen will be extracted making your stock thicker. Don't be afraid to ask the butcher to make something the way you want

[Anonymous No.18795470]

>>18792725
do you still get the same mallard browning effect with steaming? otherwise, i feel it would be better just to go the traditional route with roasting then boiling

[Anonymous No.18795545]

>>18795470
Oh you could absolutely get maillard browning while cooking the softened veggies on the stove in the uncovered reducing stage of the recipe. I just tend to avoid this by stirring occasionally because i figure that i can just brown it later when i actually use some of it for something i’m about to eat, but now that I think about it i don’t see any downsides to getting some browning on the veggie paste before putting the paste in storage for later use. And it’s better to brown the vegetables in mush/paste form because then you have access to more surface area to brown, whereas if the vegetables were whole or just cut into pieces only the outside of each piece will get brown.

[Anonymous No.18795580]

>>18793401
You do not need to cut the the bones at all. They just need to simmer in liquid for long enough. Shorter and smaller bones will require less time but no matter how big of bones you’re working with they’ll need no longer than four hours simmering, and even that may be overkill.

[Anonymous No.18795590]

>>18795545
is this a troll post? how do you brown vegetables after steaming? wouldn't they be saturated in liquid

[Anonymous No.18795604]

>>18795590
It’s not a troll post. So you know how sometimes if you cook a large volume of rice, the very bottom of it that touches the base of the pot can sometimes get brown despite the rice being saturated in water? It’s the same mechanism.

Yes at first the vegetables will be saturated in their own water and softening, but then when you get to the part of the recipe where you proceed by cooking and stirring the vegetables uncovered to evaporate their liquid and reduce in volume, you’ll be able to achieve browning.

[Anonymous No.18795648]

fuck you

[Anonymous No.18795740]

>>18795648
no, fuck off

[Anonymous No.18796713]

>>18795740
That is the one thing that makes commercial products so unusable. The amount of salt. Why do they have to put any in at all? Makes it so you can't reduce anything even a little.

[Anonymous No.18796721]

>>18796713
Well you wouldn't reduce that product because it's already in concentrated form. The salt is there for seasoning, and there's a lot of it because you're meant to add just a little bit to a lot of water. But it's also there as a preservative to help make it shelf stable, because without the salt, that stuff is like the perfect breeding ground for bacteria.

[Anonymous No.18796899]

Are there advantages of simmering stock for 16 hours over boiling it 1 hour in pressure cookee?

[Anonymous No.18796922]

>>18796899
I don’t think so. But without a pressure cooker, just simmering it by normal means, I don’t think you need to go longer than six hours.

[Anonymous No.18796926]

>>18795648
This shit is sooooo overpowering if you really use a tsp per cup lol.

[Anonymous No.18797207]

>>18796899
It might be cloudier in the pressure cooker. That shouldn't matter though. It won't reduce so you'd have to open the lid or transfer it to a regular pot if you want to do that. Also, pressure cookers are usually smaller so you can't make as much at once.

[Anonymous No.18797215]

>>18796899
It depends. The longer you're able to remove scum the better it'll taste. Old, sinewy meat fares better with longer times. Fish doesn't, and neither does any meat you find at regular butchers/supermarkets.

[Anonymous No.18798256]

I wanted to make stock using chicken wings, but everywhere I see them they've removed the tips. Why do they take the tips off? What does big chicken do with them?

[Anonymous No.18798809]

>>18798256
I guess the tips aren't considered desirable to most consumers so they probably ship/sell those off to make stock of their own, or possibly get ground up to help make your nuggies

Is there a secret to making pan sauces feel/taste less oily? I'm getting the flavor balances down pat and I won't stop making them, but it seems like using corn starch always leads to it thickening up mostly well enough, but looking translucent and not all that appealing to others when I offer them pan sauce for their entree or whatever, and it still feels a bit greasy when I eat it myself. Should I go for flour to help with that, or am I just not letting it cook down enough? Do I need to add more water, or even start adding wine?

[Anonymous No.18799248]

>>18798809
You have to be careful with flour in a pan sauce if you don't want it too oily. You have to ensure you degrease very well because flour will bind with fat and then the fat will be in suspension throughout your sauce making it impossible to skim and thus greasy and icky, which is what you were trying to avoid.
Roux typically isn't suited to a pan sauce because you have to skim it for a while after adding so you're looking at a long process.
So make sure you degrease very well, then deglaze with your liquid. If you're using stock you should have it reduced to the consistency you want before adding it so you don't have to spend time waiting for it to reduce.

[Anonymous No.18799254]

>>18796713
whats so wrong with bullion having salt? you can always adjust salt content of the final product easily. would you rather have other artificial preservatives?

[Anonymous No.18800257]

>>18799254
You can't remove salt, that's the problem. It's too salty.

[Anonymous No.18801232]

>>18799254
it potentially makes things too salty, and if you have something you're cooking for a long time over several days the reduction will cause it to get worse. just make your own stock, bullion sucks

[Anonymous No.18801235]

>>18798256
no clue, i always put them in mine. just make sure to roast the chicken off before you put it in

[Anonymous No.18801802]

>>18795470
>mallard browning effect

[Anonymous No.18802781]

>>18801802