Making Stock
Feb 20th, 2008 | By Hank | Category: The Garden, Wild Game | Comments | 16 Comments |
Making stock is among the core skills of any good cook, and it is a labor or love I embrace wholly. As a hunter and a gardener, I can often make a first-class stock solely with ingredients I’ve grown or shot. This to me is deeply satisfying. Last weekend I extracted some antelope bones and a shot-up duck from the deep-freeze to make a meat broth that will enrich my polenta, risotto, pan sauces or stews.
I almost never use water in my cooking because I always have at least a half-dozen kinds of stock lurking in my freezer: Pheasant stock, duck stock (lots of duck stock!), wild boar stock, rabbit stock, fish stock, crab stock – you name it. Makes it easier to match the stock to whatever dish I am making. Thank heaven for the box freezer!
While some will make a stock without vegetables, I am not among them. They add so much to the final flavor of a stock and can transform it from an additive into a full-fledged broth suitable for drinking on cold days. My essentials: Onions or leeks, fennel, carrots, celery. I will add herbs as appropriate, most often parsley and thyme. In this case with the antelope, I added rosemary and juniper seeds. If I have bay leaves, they go in, too. Secret weapon: parsnips. Their sweetness brings a lot to the party.
First step is roasting the bones. I like darker, fuller stocks and this is what does it. The Vietnamese don’t roast their bones when making broth for pho, which is possibly the world’s most perfect soup, and I occasionally will make stock without roasting. But not often. So I roasted these antelope bones at 400 degrees for an hour or so, untill they were yummy-looking.
Next cram your bones into the stockpot and cover with cold water. Cold water will you produce more collagen, and it’s collagen from the joints and cartilage and skin that builds body in your stock by making it thicker than water. You only get this by letting the water heat gradually.
Once it boils, let it roll for a bit while you skim the surface. Bits of blood and other stuff coagulate and will rise – they must be 
skimmed or your stock will cloud up.
After the surface is clear, reduce the heat to a bare simmer. You want it to shimmy, not roil, not even bubble too much. A boiled stock will turn cloudy, and the higher temps can extract bitter flavors from the bones. Let it do this for several hours. How long? One hour for fish, up to five hours for meaty things such as my antelope.
After the allotted time, add your veggies, roughly chopped. Now I am assuming that anyone reading this blog knows not to put old, crappy vegetables into a stock. Right? Right? I thought so. Old, crappy veggies will not improve by cooking them. Stir in your nice veg and let it cook for another hour to 90 minutes. No more.
After this, strain everything out. Grab all the big stuff with tongs first, then skim with a spider (Asia’s great gift to stock makers) and finally pour the liquid through cheesecloth set in a fine mesh sieve. Is all of this necessary? Yes. Unless you want a mucky, cloudy stock. And it is more than aesthetics: The impurities are just that – impure, and add off-flavors to your otherwise wonderful brew.
Once your stock is strained, clean the stockpot or pour the strained liquid into another one. Now you can reduce it by boiling if you want to. This is also the time you can salt the stock. Stock gets saltier the longer you boil it down because salt does not evaporate with the water. So add it close to the end and you will know what you’re getting. If you’re doing demi-glace, don’t salt at all.
All of this takes time, but not a lot of it is active. And the process is comforting to me, as much so as the reward.
I have to disagree with your bringing the stock to a boil and then backing. off, I think you get a better stock if the temperature never gets much above the 180-190 range – a bubble every now and then.
A boil for a reduction is something else altogether.
We don’t have the game stocks, I don’t hunt, but we do have five or six both frozen and canned.
To each his own, of course, but I have found my end results clearer and cleaner when I actually do let the stock boil in the beginning few minutes to get all the scum off the top. I have tried the no-boil method many times and have always had problems with cloudiness.
Canned stock? Do you pressure-can it?
Yes, the canned stocks are pressure canned, in pints. I don’t remember the time and never rely on memory for timing on pressure canning. Always checking Ball Blue Book or one of my other trusted sources. It is around 30 minutes at pressure however.
I can do 16 pints at a time, and can do that two or three times a day with out killing myself. So one of us will make a stock on Saturday, and I will can it on Sunday or bag it and freeze it. We have dark beef, light chicken, light veal and vegetable in cans at the moment as well as frozen
Ah. Debating stock. I’m a happy man.
I’m in Charcuterie’s camp of not ever boiling it, but Hank’s method accomplishes what many seem to recommend as the pre-cook to get rid of impurities – which he refers to. Interesting. I’ll have to try it.
I just can’t see any benefit to omitting veg from the stock. I wouldn’t even consider it.
Ah yes, the infamous blanching. I always saw that throwing away flavor with a scum chaser, so that’s why I do the boiling thing. I bet you can indeed get the same effect with the no-boil method, if you do that blanching step first.
We’re going to get local chickens at last! I am never impatient with the farmer. Only inside. I saw the sign-up sheet, and I swooned. Now we have the potential for all of our favorites. Stock will follow. Bliss.
I’m amazed at the variety of stocks you can make. I sometimes make lamb stock since we eat a lot of lamb but I make sure to use it for Mexican tortilla soup which uses a lot of lime (it covers the strong flavor). I’m wondering if that’s what the juniper and rosemary do. Also do you use game stock for particular dishes or just anything. Maybe I’m just a game novice and unused to the stronger flavors of game.
The boiling first is called ‘washing’ but the scummy water is discarded and the pot refilled with cold water. I suppose it could also be called blanching.
I take my method from a day class at CIA which doesn’t do this step.
Charcuteire, it is often called blanching. And like I said, to each his own.
Islandexile, whoo hoo! Chicken stock made with quality chickens makes a noticeable difference.
Susan in Italy, I am indeed accustomed to the flavors in game because it is almost the only meat I eat. But yes, I match most stocks to the meat. (Pheasant stock is pretty neutral though.)
And lamb stock? That’s even stronger than venison stock in terms of a distinctive flavor. I like it, but you definitely notice the “lamby-ness.”
Ths is fascinating, Hank. Thanks for the tips! I have begun to make my own stock each week now, in the slow cooker and the results are spectacular.
What a coincidence–I JUST this weekend devoted an entire day (though not all hands-on, of course) to making beautiful, fragrant stock from the carcass of a ginormous wild turkey that Alex got during the last week of bow season. The bird was WAY too big for me to consider plucking and roasting whole, so we skinned it and removed every last bit of meat. I reserved the legs, wings, and neck in the freezer, because even broken up, the frame was barely fitting in the pot.
I went with the “low and slow” method, to the extreme: put the raw frame, chopped vegetables, and water in my giant Crock-Pot, put the lid on (weighted), and let it go for 4 hours on high and then 8 more on low. All that remained was to chill the pot in ice-water in the sink, then strain the cooled liquid through cheesecloth. It came out PERFECT. Crystal-clear and intensely flavored, and I didn’t have to skim or clarify it at any point. From my experience, not boiling is the key to preventing cloudiness, but like you said, there are as many methods for making stock as there are cooks making it.
Is it essential to start your stock with uncooked bones? I have some ribs from a wild pig that I’m planning to smoke this weekend and I’m wondering if the leftover bones will still be suitable for making my first stock.
No, it is not essential that you start with uncooked bones, although you won’t get the same body as you would with raw ones.
I have in fact made smoked wild boar stock, and it is strong — use it for greens or something where you want a porky, smoky flavor.
[...] secret is the stock. You can make your own. Why not get some good tips here from Hank. Joanna gave me one of the best tips that I have ever had when she suggested keeping the skins on [...]
what bones do use in a light game stock?
Amy: Any will do. If I am making a generic small game stock, I will use a combination of animals — pheasant, rabbit, duck or quail. With any bird stock you use the whole carcass, and with big-game stocks I use the lower legs (shanks) and necks, but that is just my preference. You could use any bones you want.