So, her preboil does not eliminate the need to skim?
We have a restaurant in Seattle called Chiang’s. I wonder if there’s a family connection.
That’s almost exactly what we do, except for the aromatics.
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so why does one need a pressure cooker to make it happen?
I don’t understand … using her method, there is no scum when doing the second pot of water. I don’t skim the first pot, just drain, rinse well with cold water, clean the pot. Start over.
My understanding of classical French stock technique is that it, too, requires that a stock never, ever comes up to a boil. The proteins that get pushed out of the bones and tissues at high heat turn bitter as the stock cooks, and a low simmer draws more gelatin out from the bones. In general, a low and slow stock has a fuller, more complex flavor. I make a giant batch of bone broth about once a month, and I don’t particularly care if it’s cloudy or nuanced, but I have found that the end product is noticeably less gelatinous if I let the heat get too high. If I’m going to cook something for over 10 hours, I want to squeeze every bit of value out of it that I can, so I always do low and slow.
I use the lowest simmer possible, just a bubble or two a second, for 3-4 hours. It’s always good.
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We’re missing each other. Chiang’s and Ipse’s first boil is just the chicken. Their second is of the stock (which Ipse says she doesn’t need to skim). Your cribbed Chiang recipe says to skim this second boil. If you count the double stock option, a third boil is implied for Chiang.
You may be right. This raises the issue of boiling versus simmering. Is the difference a matter of kind or one of degree? As someone who’s boiled a lot of water in cookware testing, I know that water at sea level at 210F is visually indistinguishable from the same water when it finally reaches 212F. They’re both boiling.
You can move it downward from there. 200F is to the boiling point, IMO, yet plenty of recipes call this a simmer. Even the “occasional bubble” is steam at the pan floor in a nucleated form. I think the distinction is mostly arbitrary, with 100C/212F just being the hard upper limit.
Perhaps ‘simmer’ is better understood as any roiling caused by convection currents. That captures Tim’s ‘smile’, and includes the collagen-to-gelatin miracle.
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One more:
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After you drain from the first boil, just a few minutes cooking, you put rinsed chicken back in clean pot with fresh cold water, slices of ginger, salt, bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer. As I remember, I don’t get any scum that I need to skim.
OK, but that’s not what the quoted recipe says, right?
If the first step avoids all scum, I’m all for it.
I’m just saying, in my experience, I don’t have to skim. I buy organic chicken from WF.
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Have you tried soaking the raw chicken in milk to draw out the blood and serum?
No
I think it’s a viable technique. It avoids the flavor extraction/dilution of the first boil. I don’t often use raw chicken for my stocks, single or double, but when I do the next time, I’ll try to remember to compare soaking with the short pre-boil/blanch.
Same here.
Although I think. it really depends on how anal one is.
You can always (and I mean “always”) find some scum to skim.
Heck, if you wanted pure translucent chicken stock, then dry steam your chicken. But then you’ll be making chicken essence, which, in my mind, is like the chicken stock on steroids.
Nectar of the fowl gods.
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Ok…if its precooked, then yeah, then the safety limits are looser.
I throw vegetable trimmings and a cut up carcass in the crock pot with water and a bay leaf and let it slow cook 8 hours or so. Ill use a pressure cooker if ai have a time constraint but I dont think it works as well. (I will start with unsalted organic broth to bump the flavor).
If Im putting other things in it (any kind of starch) I dont clarify because the starch will cloud it anyway.
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Do you happen to know the temperature(s) of your slow cooker?
My usual small-batch stock starts with a rotisserie carcass with whatever meat is left–in this case, only the breasts had been removed for another dish. Then I chop it up, and if I want brown stock, I roast again while the mirrepoix sweats. This time I added some diced red pepper which turned out pleasant. Then I moisten with 2Q of the best no- or low-salt boxed chicken broth I can find. Peppercorns, bay leaves, bouquet garni. 1T of white wine vinegar. This batch I added a little marjoram. 10 hours at 160F.
I tasted this slow/low white stock this morning, and it’s very flavorful and bright. Not oversalted. We’ll see if/how it gels and how much fat it throws.
I think 165degF is the temperature at which bands of connective tissue will begin to dissolve. Probably need closer to 180 to get the cartilage on the ends of bones to give way. Next time I do bone broth, I’ll try keeping it between 180 and 190 the whole time to see how that works.
It took me awhile to have a chicken carcass. (I have been making lots of things from Ottolenghi’s Plentyemphasized text**.) Anyway, the smile hovers around 188F for a half full pot (10 qt 2mm copper, lid barely ajar, lowest heat on lowest burnet). Chicken and a lot of vegetable trimmings. I foresee tortilla soup for lunch after Taco Tuesday.
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