After a rescheduling delimma last March, Stocks and Sauces was postponed until August...and it is finally here!  Our first task was to make as much stock as possible.   This is quite a task in and amongst itself.  Stock is the commercial equivalent to broth, yet not quite the same.  Stock differs from broth in that stocks are made from bones.  Broths are made from the actual meat.  Because of the way they are made, the stock usually has a milder flavor than broth.

To make a stock (and in this case a white stock), you first start with bones.  Yes, bones.  As human, we do not normally eat bones, so they are leftovers that are either given to the dog or thrown to the trash.  But in the kitchen, you learn not to waste a thing!  So, the bones are weighed and put into a pot.  (We weigh them so we can get the correct proportion of all the other ingredients.)  Then we add cold water, mirepoix (a mixture of 50% onion, 25% celery and 25% carrots), and a sachet (a homemade tea bag full of herbs and seasonings).  All of this simmers and then gets strained and cooled.  After cooling, any fat or grease has congealed on the top and is scraped off.

Funny thing happens though.  You will notice that as the stock cools, it begins to thicken.  This is from the bones.  The bones contain the protein collagen which breaks down into gelatin when cooking.  The more bones, the more gelatinous the stock!

On average you will only reap about 50-75% of actual stock from what you prepare.  This makes you wonder about the time and effort that you put into the stock and if it might actually be cheaper just to purchase the stock premade.  And this is what many commercial operations do.  The time component alone deters many large scale operations from making stocks on a regular basis.  Especially in the case of brown stocks.  

For brown stocks, the bones are first roasted in order to carmelize - an important color and flavoring aspect in brown stock.  Then the bones are removed from the pans, the grease is drained off and the mirepoix is carmelized as well in the pans.  Water is then added to deglaze (remove the cooked in drippings from the bottom of the pan) and then tomato paste is added.  All of this is done in addition the the process described above.

To keep track of all of the ingredients and costs for our stocks, we complete a recipe card.  These cards are more than a few scribbled ingredients on an index card.  They contain costing information as well as conversion information - meaning taking the recipe up or down to serve fewer or more people.  Called the Conversion Factor (C.F.), it has a very simple formula:

New Recipe Old Recipe

To view or download a template of a Recipe Card, click below:   Interactive Recipe Card Template (Excel 2000, 29K)   PDF Recipe Card (9K)

So why all of this work?  Stocks serve as a flavoring component in foods and are the base of many sauces - primarily 3 of the 5 mother sauces.  Let's turn the page to find out about those...

Next..  .

Sauces: What IS a Mother Sauce?