Stocks and Sauces

Stocks and Sauces

Stock is it's own ingredient.  "Stocks," Escoffier writes, "are to cooking what the foundation is to a house."  They are the liquid concentrations of meaty bones and aromatics such as mirepoix and bouquet garni (literally garnished bouquet: a bundle of thyme sprigs, parsley stems, black peppercorn, and sometimes garlic cloves.)  Your goal when making stock (veal stock, chicken stock, beef stock, vegetable stock, fish fumet) is to ensure that it tastes of more than just its component parts.

Prepared properly, stock achieves its own flavor beyond its individual elements and serves as a unique ingredient when added to something else.  Store bought stock can do in a pinch, but serious cooks make their own to ensure quality and depth of flavor.  For good sauce and stock recipes, look to Sauces:  Classical and Contemporary Saucemaking by James Peterson.

Keep the solids wet with hot water.   Begin stock by filling the pot with enough cold water to cover the solids up to two inches.  As the water evaporates during cooking and the solids become uncovered, add more hot water to the pot. Never add cold ingredients to hot foods or vice versa.

Size the cuts to the cooking time.  Cut the bones and vegetables for white chicken stock, for instance, relative to the brief cooking time of two hours.  Use large bones and big chunks of vegetables for a beef or veal stock that takes eight or more hours to cook.

Overcooked stock tastes bitter; undercooked stock is weak and watery.  You can dilute an overcooked stock or fortify an undercooked one, but anything you do to repair a damaged stock won't be as good as getting it right in the first place.

Never season stock.  Stock is a base for sauces and other dishes that themselves will be seasoned.  Seasoning a stock directly risks concentrating the salt and cracked pepper and therefore masking the stock's foundational flavors.

Always be skimming.  Achieve clarity by skimming the impurities as they rise to the top.  This also gives the cleanest and brightest flavor.

Strain stock hard.  Take no prisoners.  Leave nothing behind but juiceless meat, bones and aromatics.  Force every drop of moisture through the cheesecloth, lined strainer or chinois:  it all belongs to the stock and has no business being anywhere else.  Push down on the solids hard.  Some of the most flavorful and valuable elements of the stock stay in the solids unless you, the committed and unrelenting cook, push them out.  Let "bone dry" be your standard.

Reduce stock as a first step to making a pan sauce.  A stock lacks the concentration of a sauce.  That means it doesn't have the right body, or intensity of flavor and viscosity, to stand on its own.  Reduce the water content to concentrate the stock's flavor and bring it closer to a sauce.

Deglaze the pan.  Those crusty bits that stick to the pan when you saute, sear or roast are the food's gift to the cook.  Called sucs (sooks) these drippings and food particles contain a sublime depth of flavor that only the processes of caramelization and fat rendering can impart.  To deglaze:  Add stock, vinegar, or wine to the pan over moderate heat.  Scrape and stir with a wooden spoon.  Watch the liquid darken as the pan becomes clean (deglazed) from this happy marriage of ingredients.  Allow the pan sauce to reduce for further concentration and thickness.  Now season for added flavor, and perhaps add a touch of butter.

Aim for proper thickness of sauce.  Following reduction, sauces often are still too thin.  Further reduction might leave you with too little sauce, or an over-concentrated sauce.  Solution:  Thicken sauce by using a liaison, that is, adding beurre manie (equal parts butter and flour) a slurry (cornstarch, potato starch, arrowroot, or rice flour dissolved in liquid,) heavy cream (reduced by half) or a roux (equal parts cooked flour and butter) or use a beaten egg yolk. Your test for the right thickness: the sauce coats the back of a spoon and holds its shape when you run your (very clean) finger through it.

A marinade is NOT a sauce.  Do not serve a marinade with cooked foods after it has touched raw foods.  Once it has done its job, throw it out.

Use sauce with restraint.  Sauce is liquid seasoning:  it should compliment its food, never outshine it.  Leave the diner wanting more.