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Do you find yourself buying canned chicken broth and yet throwing out the bones of roasted chicken? Does your beef broth consist of a bouillon cube and some boiling water? Does your brown gravy start with brown powdered mix? If so, it might be time to learn how to make your own stocks from scratch. It's easy, fun, and your final product will blow the tops off of those products in a can.
Now the basic difference between a stock and a broth is this: a broth is seasoned (with salt) and a stock is not. A stock is never served on it's own, a broth may be. Really a stock is an unfinished product that is waiting to be transformed into a soup or sauce by a talented chef. What you are doing when making stock is taking meat and/or bones, vegetables, herbs, and spices and simmering them in water until their flavors, & nourishing elements have been extracted. This happens best near the boiling point of water. Water is the greatest solvent and what you are doing is extracting flavors and body into that water. The basic elements that go into a well made stock are the nourishing element (i.e. meat, bones, vegetables), the aromatics(i.e. vegetables, spices, herbs), the moistening element (i.e. water, wine, you may even use some stock in the preparation of another to intensify the flavors). Bones, especially from a young animal, and cartilage contain collagen which at the boiling point of water converts into gelatin thus giving the stock body.
The procedures are as follows, and please note some chefs have variances in how they go about things and still yield a quality product, so you may see procedures that vary slightly from this one, that's OK this just a basic outline. Take your meat and bones, if you are making a brown stock, roast them in the oven until they brown, if not put them in a heavy bottomed stock pot and cover by about two inches of cold water. Slowly bring it to a simmer, there will be insoluble proteins and albumen that will rise to the top, skim these off with a ladle and discard. This is called scumming or depoulliage in French. You want to start in cold water because if you start it in hot the albumen is forced out too quickly thus making your stock cloudy and unappealing. Skim the scum for about twenty minutes and then add your chopped root vegetables (almost always celery, onion, and carrot, plus a few others on occasion); this is called a mirepoix( pro. meer-pwah), and your aromatic herbs (usually thyme, parsley,bay leaf, garlic, peppercorns, clove) this is called a bouquet-garni. Allow all this to simmer together anywhere from four to fifteen hours, depending on the size of the bones and meat that you are trying to penetrate and extract flavors and nutrients from. Scum periodically as needed, remember to keep it at a slow simmer, just under the boil.
Strain your stock, let cool and refrigerate. When cold all the fat will solidify at the top. Remove and either make a roux out of it for gravy or discard. You now have a defatted stock that should be full of flavor although not seasoned as of yet and slightly gelatinous depending on the quality of the bones used. Simple, eh? Now you can take this stock and make soup out of it or reduce it by boiling it and thus evaporating the water and intensifying the flavors. Recall, water extracted nutrients and flavor, now when you cook off the water thus evaporating it, what is left are nutrients and flavor compounds that will intensify and usually thicken naturally. Reduce down to the flavor intensity you desire then either use at the natural thickness or thicken with a roux or starch slurry. Season. You can now flavor this with spices, herbs, wines, add cream, ect. The sky is the limit! In fact, the French call stocks, "fonds" because they are the foundation of all the classic sauces.
As you probably have noted this is not a recipe, it is just giving you an over all view of what a stock is and what the process is for making one. Now find a good stock recipe and you should be well equipped to understand the procedures called for in the recipe and the reasons for them. Bon Appetit!
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