So I learned today I’ve been making stocks wrong for a long time.  Awesome.

How many people boil a chicken and your veggies, take the chicken out, and use that?

Or get fancier and boil only the chicken, strain the bones out, then add your goods?

Both methods are, apparently, FAILS.  Booooo.

Vhat to do eh?  I tell you.

First off, no boiling.  Ever.  When you take what you’re doing over 190 degrees (F) it begins to bring out the more bitter flavors of the bones, etc.

Take your bones only (this applies to beef stocks as well) and bring them to a very gentle simmer for about 45 min.  You are in-effect, poaching them.  Why?  All that crap that collects on the top when you do this, are impurities and shit that no tastie good and comes out when initially exposed to heat.  Double boo.

Drain and keep only the bones.  Rinse them completely.  Put bones back in pot and cover with NEW water, and your veggies.  Proceed to make your stock.

What you’ll have at the end after you strain out the bones/veggies will be your base for soups, etc.  This is the time to salt, not before.

I’ll be damned if it worked too.  And in the end, was way easier cause you don’t have to keep trying to get all this crap out of your soup.

We did a duck stock today- not to be fancy actually, duck bones were the end result of a 20 minute raid of other classroom’s walk-in fridges before class to find bones.  That’s the great thing about this school, someone is always doing something.  Yesterday Foundations III (I’m in Foundations I) did duck de-boning.  Today we used their bones for stock.

Know what ELSE happens at culinary school?  The catering class next to you puts on a practice buffet and someone knocks on your door and says LUNCH TIME!  And we all eat their food.  Hehhehheh.

The pic is my view into the overhead mirrors in class, tilted to see down into what’s demo cooking.  So imagine standing there looking up, this is what you’d see.  We did stocks and bechamel today.