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Vegetable stock: my secret lover (2011)
- sedatk 3y agoLove that the title's marked "(2011)", so that we shouldn't expect the latest developments on vegetable stock from this article. It might even be outdated now, and be replaced with a superior stock of sorts.
- appplication 3y agoEveryone knows you can’t act on old stock advice
- mberning 3y agoKnorr stock concentrate is pretty good in a pinch. Cheap, plentiful, and fast.
- mckn1ght 3y agoWhenever I make stock I make a lot and then freeze it in ice cube trays. Pop out into a gallon ziplock and keep in the freezer. Same convenience at time of use, for slightly more work to make it, but IMO it’s a superior result (especially when you consider chicken/beef/veal stock vs concentrate) so i’m willing to go through with it.
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago[flagged]
- ramses0 3y agoKitchen Accomplice is worth looking at.
- cogman10 3y agoI've been pretty happy with "better than bouillon"
- calf 3y agoMarco Pierre White is on record for saying he doesn't bother to make stock at home.
- ballooney 3y agoHe’s also on Knorr’s payroll for saying it.
- 23B1 3y agoLPT you can use all your vegetable trimmings to make stock so long as you have roughly the proper proportions. We just keep them in the freezer in a bag until ready to make stock, and we do it in our instantpot with a dash of AC vinegar. Onions: Provide a sweet and savory base flavor (can vary based on onion type eg yellow, white, red) Carrots: Add sweetness and earthiness. Celery: Adds a savory note and depth. Leek: Adds a mild, sweet onion flavor. Garlic: Adds a pungent, savory flavor. Bay leaf: Adds a subtle herbal note (lots of people think bay leaves add very little to most things but fresh bay leaves really help) Parsley stems: Adds freshness and a herbaceous flavor.
- peterpost2 3y agoPaprika as well? For some reason I always have too much of those left.
- hendersonreed 3y agoI assume you mean a fresh "bell pepper"? In American English paprika refers just to the dried spice, while the rotund and mild peppers are bell peppers. But you can definitely add either to a stock. The fresh pepper will add (if red) a sweetness and savory note. The green peppers will add more vegetal flavors, less sweetness. But I think leftover pepper is best eaten raw as a snack, salad dressing optional.
- Mo3 3y agoWeird. So ground up "bell peppers" are called Paprika instead of the "bell pepper" itself.
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoExcept it's not made out of the same variety of peppers as what we call bell peppers, according to Wikipedia.
- dsr_ 3y agoNo, US paprika is ground dried sweet or hot peppers. Often imported from Hungary.
- retrac 3y agoSlow-cooking to bring out a complex, deep, yet mild flavour is a crucial technique in general. I'm too impatient for it most of the time, but I discovered it while trying to be economical. Like with leftover stew, safe to eat but maybe the texture was off or whatever - pick out incompatible ingredients, mash, slow cook with lots of water for many hours until reduced to gravy. Add some of that to the next stew. Just wonderful. Indeed, almost any time you would add water or thickener, some stock or gravy is probably better.
- fuzztester 3y agoReminds of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew , sometimes as pot-au-feu: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-au-feu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-au-feu
- phyzome 3y agoWhat I don't like about stock is that you end up throwing out food. (How much of that is indigestible fiber, and how much is nutritive? Not sure, but I suspect the latter is a large portion of the waste...)
- mckn1ght 3y agoIt’s a great addition to the compost heap though! ETA: shouldn’t use normally edible parts to make stock. Only like the tips and tails of carrots, celery root balls, onion peels… I keep a gallon ziplock in the freezer that accumulates these as I cook other things. When it’s full I usually make chicken stock.
- gnicholas 3y agoHow do you get enough carrots if you're just using tips/tails? Or do you supplement that with whole carrots?
- dekhn 3y agoYou can also "splurge" and make a veggie stock using whole ingredients; for example, I use whole fresh celery, carrots, peppers, onions, and garlic. It's like $5 of ingredients.
- mckn1ght 3y agoNope I just use whatever is in the bag, I don’t care too much about the ratio. But we try to eat lots of carrot/celery sticks for snacks, and I regularly cook things with mirepoix so there’s not exactly a dearth of them.
- aftoprokrustes 3y agoI cook for a 5 persons household, and I fill 4 to 5 1L Ziplock bags with vegetable peels, tips/tails and other "garbage", which I then turn into 1 to 2L of stock. We also eat a lot of pasta, and I make sure to keep the "skin" of parmeggiano or grana padano we eat, and throw it in there as well. If you try it, you will likely be surprised by how mich usually gets thrown away.
- majjam 3y agoHow do people strain their stock? I use a seive with a muslin in which I then squeeze to get all the juices, but its unweildy and messy.
- mckn1ght 3y agoI just use a fine mesh strainer. If you really want clarified stock, you can simmer it with some egg whites and/or shells, the proteins will agglomerate all the remaining sediment. Strain again and done.
- cogman10 3y agoI'd assume with the muslin and squeezing they aren't going after clarified stock.
- Optimal_Persona 3y agoFirst through colander and then 1 or 2x through fine mesh strainer.
- cogman10 3y agoLike you are trying to pull the juices from the plant matter? The stock should be flavorful enough as is. You shouldn't need to also squeeze the vegetables to get more flavor (just cook longer if you want that). I use a mesh sieve and nothing else.
- empath-nirvana 3y agoi use a mesh sieve, but i also give the vegetables a press as i'm doing it.
- mathgradthrow 3y agoone round through the sieve without the cheesecloth, discsrd large solids, and then one round with the cheese cloth, no squeezing. I don't typically add vegetables to my stock thought, as it seems to me to make more sense to me to add them later, so that the flavors don't evaporate off.
- empath-nirvana 3y agoThere are two things a good meat stock provides, one is flavor, and the other is _gelatin_. Vegetable provides the first but not the second, and store bought meat stock has the first, but not the second. A really good homemade meat stock will gel _solid_ if you refrigerate it. I've never found a brand of store bought meat stock that has an appreciable amount of gelatin. One way to level up your pan sauces at home is to dissolve a packet of clear unflavored gelatin per cup of stock before using it -- give it about 10 minutes to bloom first and then stir it. It'll make it much thicker and richer as it reduces -- and this works for basically any recipe that needs stock.
- zwieback 3y agoDiscovered by accident that really low end pork from the supermarket, which I throw in the slow cooker for various uses, yields a great nearly solid stock. I was going to just use the lard swimming on the top but when I tasted the stuff that solidifies underneath it was delicious.
- giantg2 3y agoThere's a technical name for that stuff. That's one on the main ingredients of Spam.
- dekhn 3y agoMost stock recipes have a "degreasing step" where you're splitting the lard from the stock (because fatty stock is kind of ... gross?)
- zwieback 3y agoRight, I use both. I degrease the stock but the lard is also fantastic. For chicken or turkey I would just throw the fat away but lard is great.
- plufz 3y agoAs someone who has been a vegetarian for over 25 years I’ve never heard of this. Why would you want your stock to have a thickener? Isn’t it easier to just add a thickener to the food you make so you can control how thick or thin the result is?
- rolivercoffee 3y agoJames Hoffmann had an interesting take on making vegetable stock. TL;DW: He used a juicer https://youtu.be/VV68NiRulEk https://youtu.be/VV68NiRulEk
- bborud 3y agoWhen I make stock I usually follow the traditional route, but rather than discard the vegetables I stick my Bamix into the pot and let it run until the contents are silky smooth. (Think of the Bamix as a poor man’s Pacojet if you run it long enough :-)). This results in what can best be described as a runny purée. If I’m making something that will be thickened there is no need to run the result through a fine meshed sieve. And most of the time when I cook that is the case. Which means no unnecessary waste. If you want a broth then I suppose I could let it sit until the solids have settled and scoop off the liquid. What I usually do is go easy on the Bamix so the more of the solids are taken out by the sieve. What would be more interesting would be to do both: juice first, the sautee and then cook the pulp and finally combine the two.
- waldothedog 3y agoI do something similar! Usually I will lightly fry or roast the scraps before blending in the vitamix, then straining. It’s great. I am also getting into flavoring oils/fats in a similar way.
- bch 3y ago> I stick my Bamix into the pot and let it run until the contents are silky smooth How do you like the Bamix? I was considering replacing my aging Kitchen Aid immersion blender (which I love, but it’s starting to fall apart) with either another Kitchen Aid, or a Braun, or a Bamix. The Bamix seems a very opinionated design, but interesting. Reviews I’ve seen are split between love/hate, though.
- pb060 3y agoNot the op but I don't think it blends better than others. What I really don't like is the little split in the removable blade where food sticks into and you can only remove using a dental floss or a folded piece of paper. Knowing that I would have got one with a fixed blade.
- manishsharan 3y agoMy experience with stock boils down how much effort is required to create the stock vs how much and how long can it stay in the fridge. It takes hours to make good chicken stock and I want to make and store a whole lot of stock so that it is available to me for at least a week or longer. However, I don't have a lot of space in my fridge. Boiling your stock down to a fraction of the original volume is not a solution .. the carrots and celery and especially the aromatics do not do well when frozen for over a week. edit: typo
- Loughla 3y agoWe freeze our stock in 1 cup portions. Makes it very easy to keep tabs on what you have, and you just throw the ice in when you need stock. I find that it does not lose any flavor, really at all. In the freezer it lasts, essentially, forever.
- mardef 3y agoStock should just be the liquid. You're not going to get good flavor or texture out of the veg that's simmered for hours. Make the stock, strain it, put in a freezer bag and freeze flat. Keeps a long time and takes little space. Then when you want to make soup, thaw the stock, add veg and cook until the right texture.
- sowbug 3y agoRelated: if you ever get a $5 Costco rotisserie chicken, don't throw it away when you're done with it! Put the rest in a small pot with some water and let it barely simmer for a long time (6-12 hours). Taste it every few hours, adding salt and stirring. Strain out the bones and other gunk, and you'll end up with delicious mostly-homemade chicken broth.
- xiaomai 3y agoI do this in my instant pot (35 minutes at high pressure). I don't salt until I'm using it in a recipe.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cal85 3y agoWhat’s the logic in tasting and salting throughout? If you salt it to taste then it will end up getting too salty as it reduces, forcing you to top it up with more water (reducing the flavour from the meat). Why not just make the stock without salt, then use it to make something, and then taste and salt that other thing perfectly?
- sowbug 3y agoFair point. For me, the broth is the final product -- it's chicken soup!
- hansvm 3y agoI don't know about that strategy in particular per se (though I'll spitball a rationale at the end if you're curious), but when making soup you generally want to split your salt between a conservative amount up-front and salting to taste at the end. Doing so 1. Ensures chunks of meat, veg, ... can absorb a little salt. Potatoes especially benefit from this. 2. Serves as a minor tenderizing agent for meat chunks (the effect is very small, you should pre-salt or pre-brine if you want it to be large). 3. Mildly dehydrates the other soup ingredients via osmosis, and prevents them from plumping up via osmosis the other direction when they have some internal salts. This concentrates flavors in the chunky bits and generally gives a bit nicer texture. 4. Gives you a smaller "gap" of remaining salt to add at the end. That's important because smaller quantities are easier for us to judge accurately, so you can get the salt level right in fewer iterations, and because a lot of people aren't methodical when taste-testing salt and accidentally saturate their taste buds if they have to try a few times (leading to an overly salty soup -- even to their own taste buds a few minutes later). It has a few other minor effects. As always in cooking, those are just "changes" and not necessarily "positive changes" (and again, for most dishes the effects are small), but I usually like soups I pre-salt a bit better than ones I don't. As to the actual technique you asked about, I think the biggest benefit would be an extension of point (4) above. Salting in small amounts with large gaps in time allows your taste buds time to recover and makes it easier to dial the salt in perfectly. If you frequently make stock you'll get a feel for what it "should" taste like at each stage, so the decreasing water volume will wind up mattering less than you might think. Mind you, I don't personally like to salt my stocks. You have very different salt requirements for different end uses. If it's salty enough for a soup (which has tons of added water), it can't make a passable pan sauce (which has almost no extra volume comparatively). Adding the salt explicitly in each recipe is easier for me to work with personally. It also makes it easier to accommodate the occasional guest on a low sodium diet. Tangentially, I often prefer to cook my stocks down into something like a demi-glace. They take less space in the fridge, they keep better, they're easier to use in pan sauces (where you don't want much extra water and need to be careful which stage you add the stock if you have to cook water out), they're no harder to use for soups (just add more water as desired), and I find them a bit easier to portion that way (if a recipe has specific texture expectations, you need to account for water percentage somehow, and having it all gone is an easy mechanism; even for other recipes, breaking off a chunk about the right size is fast, mess-free, and dishes-free, which is slightly less the case with liquid stocks). The biggest downside is just removing the hot water vapor from my home (old apartment, poor air-flow). I've been in kitchens where that's a non-issue, but at present demi-glace is a wintertime activity when I don't mind having a few doors open to pull fresh, cold air in. Another tangential tip, roast the bones (250F for 6h, or 400F for 2) and meat scraps before turning them into stock. Most end uses benefit from the extra richness.
- hardwaregeek 3y agoFish stock is an underrated one too. I’ve been getting into making sushi from whole fish and inevitably you end up with some bits and pieces from the fish, like the pin bones or the leftover spine. Boil it with some ginger and you’ll get a tasty stock with a deep umami. Add in the fish head if you want some gelatin. You can even buy fish bones for very very cheap if you want to skip a step. Shrimp shells are another easy source for a savory broth.
- zenon 3y agoWe usually make miso soup when we make sushi. We use the fish bits and pieces to make the dashi. This adds some nice flavor abd mouthfeel to the finished soup.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- anitil 3y agoI've always struggled with fish stock, it comes out somehow bland. I've read different methods - removing all the meat and leaving only bones vs using skin/head etc. Do you have any tips? (also any tips for avoiding the whole house smelling of fish?)
- hardwaregeek 3y agoThe ginger helps with the aroma. What fish are you using? In theory you could age the bones for a few days, since ultra fresh fish actually has less glutamates. You can also roast the bones to get some light color. Or add in some kombu for more umami.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y agoI started spearfishing recently. All the "cool" people are dry aging their catch. I didnt realize aging increases glutamate content.
- kelipso 3y agoFish stock, you only cook it for around 30 mins. I remember reading somewhere that fish stock loses flavor when you cook for longer times.
- linsomniac 3y agoI've lately been putting 1-2 star anise in my stockpot when I'm making stock and I'm totally obsessed with it.
- mauvehaus 3y agoStar anise is an ingredient in Vietnamese pho recipes. The liquid is essentially a beef stock. Mind you, I've not made pho successfully, but I've read a few recipes for it and tried making it a couple times.
- downut 3y agoOh I know where you're coming from, but a point of stocks is that they can be the basis for many things. Think of the flavorings as a "tilt". If you use star anise right from the start it tilts toward (to my taste) a generic Asian direction. If this is where it ends up, mainly, that's awesome. Otherwise you can easily make a tea of those star anise and add that later.
- fuzztester 3y agoTry ajwain next time. Small amount, it's strong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajwain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajwain
- tptacek 3y agoRelated, David Chang's chicken soup recipe (he did a video on it on the first season of Mind of a Chef) --- poach the chicken by itself, and make a vegetable stock on the side, then dose the vegetable and chicken stock to taste in the final plated dish.
- selimthegrim 3y agoThanks for the rec!
- graycat 3y agoYup, details on stocks go back to Escoffier and A. Escoffier, 'Le Guide Culinaire: The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery', Translated by H. L. Cracknell and R. J. Kaufmann, ISBN 0-8317-5478-8, Mayflower, New York, 1982. For beef stock, Escoffier wants bones of old cattle -- so, could use retired bulls and/or dairy cattle. Apparently retired cattle are a source of beef for the fast food hamburger restaurants. Instead of vegetable stock I just make vegetable soup. I use a 16 quart stock pot and add onions and red potatoes (both browned in olive oil), canned peas, carrots, corn, beans, 10 pounds of frozen mixed vegetables, garlic, thyme, basil, oregano, canned crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper. Sooo, that mixture makes its own vegetable stock! I bring the pot to a simmer to sterilize. I make a flavor mixture: 1 cup of each of soy sauce, BBQ sauce, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce. Just before serving, I add some water (don't have much in the 16 quart pot) and some of flavor mixture. It tastes good!
- denton-scratch 3y ago> For beef stock, Escoffier wants bones of old cattle He worked most of his career in London hotels and restaurants. He complained that you can't get proper old cattle in Britain; he said we slaughtered them too young, no older than two years. For stock, he wanted animals aged 4 years, or even older.
- shermantanktop 3y ago“But, you keen, they’re too hard to make! They take too long! Nay. Sit down.” “the subsequent dinner’s conversation remained imperturbably anchored to how unbelievably tasty it was” Can’t say I’m a fan of this writing. Nigel Slater is similarly precious and self-regarding. DIY stock can be great but it’s a long process and the result is usually cloudy, in my experience.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoI read it in Frasier Crane's voice and thought the same.
- jdblair 3y agoMy similar cooking hack: bean broth (sometimes called bean liquor). Save the water from cooking beans to use as stock. When I cook white beans, I freeze the broth in ice cube trays and use it in place of water when cooking. When I cook darker beans, I use the broth to make soup or stews. I've made a simple brothy soup from the light broth garnished with herbs (fried sage leaves always impresses) and a splash of olive oil. It's a great meal starter.
- wodenokoto 3y agoThat stock sounds rather weak. A surprisingly simple, yet delicious and versatile stock is Japanese dashi. No long boiling process is needed (though I admit to just use powdered dashi) From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashi > The most common form of dashi is a simple broth made by heating water containing kombu (edible kelp) and kezurikatsuo (shavings of katsuobushi – preserved, fermented skipjack tuna or bonito) to near-boiling, then straining the resultant liquid Though in my experience the resultant liquid is reduced.
- mitchbob 3y agoIt's the peak of leek season here in Northern California, and easily the biggest improvement we've made to our vegetable soups is to make a quick stock from the green tops of our leeks, finely chopped, together with the vegetable odds and ends we always seem to have, such as celery leaves and the outer layer of the leek bulbs, then use the stock in place of water in the soup recipes. Simmering the stock for no longer than takes to make the rest of a minestrone is plenty, and the leek fragrance is amazing.
- Nursie 3y ago"I am positively mystified why every cook in every household isn’t making this elixir regularly." goes on to describe a 70+ minute process There's your answer. Not everyone enjoys cooking, and even fewer enjoy preparatory drudge-work, even when the results are excellent.
- wodenokoto 3y agoQuestion to all the HN users cooking broth on vegetable scraps: How do you determine what part of the vegetable is good enough for stock, but not good enough to eat? Off my the top of my head: - People say carrot peelings go in the stock, but I am assuming no one is throwing their potato peeling in the stock. (I use neither - that's why I'm peeling it) - Do you use the carrot top? The part you cut off so as not to eat the green. What about the green? - What about either end of an onion? The paper like skin? If so, do you wash it?
- fader 3y agoThere's a bit of trial and error to figure it out, depending on the vegetables you eat. Some things make bad stock (e.g. the inner membranes of a bell pepper or any cruciferous veggies will be bitter), some make little difference (the papery onion skin), others are great (carrot peelings). A good stock will have some carrots (peels or chunks), celery (leaves are great for this), onion (the ends are perfect), tomatoes (again, the cut off ends are perfect), and probably whatever parsley or any other veggies that are hanging around and will spoil before I eat them. I keep the flavor profile pretty neutral so maybe a bit of pepper and salt but nothing else. I don't throw in anything that is obviously bad or filthy, but a quick rinse at best is really all you need. The stock will be boiled at least once, more than likely twice (when you cook with it) so I'm more concerned with flavor than bacteria.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoI use stock cubes. They take no space to store and no time to make and they're dirt cheap if you count the power you don't need to boil vegetables to a stock yourself. I love cooking and make all sorts of things myself from scratch, mind. So when I want to make a soup, I start with a light roux (extra virgin olive oil and strong wholemeal flour, equal measures), then boil some water, melt in a couple of stock cubes and add to the roux. Also makes a great base for sauces. For extra flavour I sautée some onions in the olive oil before adding the flour. The truth is that most commercial stock cubes are basically salt, with a bit of flavouring, which is a total rip-off and pointless. My local supermarket sells a couple brands that have 0-salt stock cubes and one of them even has no "flavour enhancers" so I go for those. The only downside is that the stock always tastes the same. In the last couple of years I've relaxed a lot about making it all myself from scratch and I'll happily use tinned mushroom, beans or chickpeas (for houmous). Considering the amount of time you have to boil pulses before they're the right consistency that probably saves me a buttload of money, on top of the time. I draw the line at carrots. Carrots are best, fresh.
- jbaber 3y agoAny brand names for 0-salt stock you can share? I don't even particularly like cooking, but make lots of stuff from scratch just to reduce specifically salt.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoThe brand I mentioned above that is without (too many?) additives is Kallo: https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/kallo-organic-vegetable-low-salt-6-stock-cubes/023105-11241-11242 https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/kallo-organic-vegetab... They also have chicken and beef cubes. I have to correct my earlier comment though, now that I look at the ingredients again: it's not 0 salt. The page above lists 0.1g per 100ml of stock, so once hydrated. It's a bit annoying they don't tell you exactly how much salt is in the cube itself, only in the stock. Apologies. I remembered it as being 0 salt. The other brand that I ended up not using because it looked to me like it had too many additives is Knorr, who also have veg, chicken and beef stocks and list 0g salt per 100ml of stock: https://www.knorr.com/uk/products/zero-salt.html https://www.knorr.com/uk/products/zero-salt.html