Today’s question is about making it yourself. Love me some DIY food.
What’s something you insist on making more or less from scratch that the rest of us might just break out a box or can for?
Two things leap to mind immediately, and they are broths for soups and stew bases; and mac and cheese. I am going to ramble about the former, then give you a recipe for mac and cheese at the end. Cool? Okay, here we go.
I have already addressed this a bit in my first and second columns, in which we talked about soupin’ it up from scratch. I feel like I should dig deeper into stock, though, because it is a really useful thing to have around, plus really good for you. Boiling bones coaxes out minerals you cannot get from other foods, and the resulting broths are highly nutritious.
In times gone by, workers in Paris frequented broth houses called “bouillons,” which makes you think those store-bought bouillon pastes and bricks would be a good idea – but they are chock full of salt and really not the same thing. You can get low-sodium boxed stock, yeah. But why, when that costs so much and broth is so easy to make and keep?
The difference between stock and bone broth, in my opinion, is veggies. Stock includes them, bone broth does not. Bone broths take time. Good Sunday activities while you are napping and puttering about the house. Letting them roll makes all the difference, and there is no cutting corners here. Sorry.
Different bones have different densities, or porousness, and take different amounts of time to release the minerals and collagen that makes them so darn good for you. Beef and lamb bones are significantly denser than bird bones, so making a beef stock requires a full day of boiling, whereas you can bust out a chicken stock in a couple of hours.
You will also get different flavors. Beef bones are great for hearty winter soups and stews such as beef and barley. Lamb stock is great for a lamb curry. Pork stock usually makes an appearance in Asian soups, and chicken stock … well, chicken stock is pretty much good in all of those places and more.
Last night I made a good old roast chicken for dinner and my guest reminded me of a neat trick for future stock-ery: Every time you use a good stock veggie – generally called aromatics and including carrots, onions, leeks, celery and fresh herbs – keep the peels and trimmings in a plastic bag in the freezer. Onion peels and ends, the ends of carrots, leek greens, stems of parsley, etc., all will freeze well for future boiling. I love mushrooms, which I think I will have to wax about another time, so I save the stems when I chop them up and toss them in the bag as well. (You can freeze those chicken bones, too, if it’s not convenient to make stock right after a chicken dinner.)
While some people use lettuce and kale in stocks, and that’s cool, I guess, even though I don’t, I do not recommend broccoli. It gets what I call “doggy,” which I can describe only as smelling like a stinky dog. I advise you to steer clear.
When you have roasted and eaten your whole chicken or scored a bunch of bones in some other way, you will thank past you for being so prepared as to have a bag of aromatics ready to go! Didn’t save veggie stuff? No problem! Just get an onion, a couple of carrots, a stalk of celery or two, cut them into rough chunks and toss them in your pot.
Either way, the process here is so easy you will never go back to the box.
Starting with meat stocks: Beef, lamb and pork soup bones can be found at many grocery stores and butchers. Lamb is harder to find than beef, as is pork. If they are not in the case, ask the meat department or butcher. (None are as easy to find as they once were, but they are out there.) Before boiling, you can throw them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes and get some color on them. Why? No idea. Try it with this step and without and get back to me about whether it makes a difference.
The more bones, the richer the broth gets. There is even a thing called “double stocking” in which you make the stock, add fresh bones and make it again. Soup bones are relatively inexpensive, and you get so much for your buck that it is worth it to go heavy when you do find them.
Put your bones and veggies in a big – and I mean big – soup pot. Big enough that you can cover everything completely with cold water. Do that. I like to throw in some bay leaves and peppercorns and a little bit of salt (let’s say 1T for a big batch). I put it on the stove on high heat until it comes to a boil, with lots of movement and rolling of the water, then reduce the heat to a simmer, so it’s bubbling nicely but not splashing about. As the stock cooks, the water will steam off. Replace it so you do not burn out your pot. It’s okay to keep adding water for a long time, especially with these hard bones. A good beef stock is pretty much never done. You can let it roll all day.
Much faster is chicken or turkey stock. I like to cook it for a couple of hours, but you can make a passable poultry stock pretty quickly – in an hour or so. As mentioned, chicken stock is super good to have around. It is excellent as a liquid in stews, and you can use it in most meat-based soups. What do I mean about having it around? Once again, your freezer is your friend. You know all those takeout containers that fall out of the cupboard every time you open it? Fill them with your stock to a half-inch below the rim and freeze them for later. Be sure the liquid is nice and cool first, and I recommend adding a piece of tape atop telling you what the containers hold and when you froze them. But if you want to take your chances on bone broth roulette, that is fine.
Veggie stock is very fast and, like chicken stock, very useful. Use the same aromatics – onion, carrot, celery and herbs. After as little as an hour they will turn to mush and you are done. Ta-da.
In all cases, before freezing or cooking with these broths, strain them well. There are ways of “clarifying” broths to eliminate impurities such as fat that include making a “raft” of egg white and leeks. (You mix the contents into a stock and they float to the top when heated. Fascinating.) It is a way of making broths clearer, and if you are making a consomme, it matters. I have done it exactly once and would not be the one to tell you how, so I defer to blogger Hank Shaw, who has, and does, it seems.
The last thing I have to say about all of this is that the more you boil your meat bones, the more collagen (an important protein that provides structure and strength to skin, bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments). In some cases, this means that they will become jellylike when they cool, which is awesome. That is the sign of a job well done.
Mac and cheese
As I mentioned, the other thing I really recommend making from scratch is mac and cheese. Those grocery store boxes, and the powders within, are just awful, full of all kinds of dyes and chemicals you do not need in your life and your body. Homemade mac and cheese is not fast, nor is it especially easy, but it really is utterly delicious and worth the doing. Conveniently, when I was doing a mac and cheese club (called Club Mac, which was a play on Club Med that pretty much nobody got) I wrote this recipe for lobster mac. Naturally, you can feel free to skip the lobster (though it is so yummy), or replace it with broccoli, hot dogs, bacon, chunks of cheese or anything else you think would be delightful. In my opinion, the topping should be crushed potato chips, and hot sauce is essential.
Send cooking questions to JJ Gonson, a personal chef at Cuisine en Locale, at jjgonson@csindie.com.
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