I was recently at a French diner where the steak sauce, besides containing unreasonable amounts of butter, had a wonderfully robust flavor and it was due not to the herbals that gave it fragrance, but the richness of the meat stock on which it was based (you can't say anything in French cooking is butter-based, that's doesn't tell anything at all). This all came back to me the Sunday after dinner when I was walking by a butcher stall at an outside market, and on the spur of the moment I asked, "Do you have bird carcasses and rendered duck fat?" Why yes they did, and so swinging by Whole Foods for marrow bones on the way home I'd amassed quite the collection of meaty products.
With hobbies like this, I probably have a hard time making friends.My mom is a firm believer in the scientific fact that certain flavors are hydrophillic (water soluble) and others are hydrophobic (oil based). So, to bring out the latter, before boiling all this good stuff in water I threw it all in a pan,
I hear the kid across the hall in 3B is looking for his pet.fried it for 10 minutes in a generous helping of duck fat, then tossed the whole pile into the broiler for the same, resulting in a nicely browned pile of meats and meat juices.
On top I garnished with some rosemary, thyme, marjoram, pepper, and sage. All this went into a big stock pot with two onions, some carrots and a stalk of celery and boiled for days. Seriously, four days.
It looks like a Michael Bay movie in there.During this time, I constantly skimmed the fat off the top, saving it all in an empty yogurt container (empty being redundant here, I'm not sure what sort of fellow would pour liquid meat fat on top of yogurt) and easily filling one and a half quart-sized yogurt containers. Yikes!
Around day four of this involved affair I decided I wanted to have short ribs for dinner, so I went and bought two packages of oxtails, a pile of lamb bones, and pork short ribs and threw them all in as well.
After an hour of boiling all together, I took the pork ribs out, ate them, then threw the bones back in. Come on, it's going to boil for another three days, it's all good.
After adding the lamb bones I noticed the stock took a much more pungent aroma, so to partially counter this I added two thick slices of ginger and two cloves of garlic. Problem solved.
On Saturday morning, I took all the bones out, leaving another macabre scene at my kitchen.
If this turns your stomach, grave robbing is not for you.Now that most of the solid matter was gone, I needed to do a final skimming to make sure I got all the fat out. To do that, I added more water, boiled then let it cool. The fat rose to the surface and solidified, where it's easy to pick off. While I was waiting for that to happen, I did another experiment; are pancakes better when made with one egg or two? To answer this, I made two identical pancake batters (flour, baking powder, salt, buttermilk powder, eggs (1 or 2) pinch of sugar, dollop of whole yogurt, and milk for consistency).
I think I like them more with two. With just one, the pancakes were more cake-like, crumbly and delicate. With two, they had a much more substantial, dense feeling. The texture of breads is also very dependent on how long the flour is mixed (has to do with proteins in gluten) so I tried to do the same for both, but I suspect I mixed the two egg batter a bit longer. After our little pancake diversion, I did the final skimming and also strained the stock for all remaining solids.
I think I just made PETA's top 10 most wanted list.After boiling for another hour, the several quarts of stock was reduced to a thick, concentrated brown syrup. I let this cool a few, then poured it into an ice cube tray. This way, I have easy-to-use quanta of yummy meat goodness.
How do you fit 10kg of meat in an ice cube tray?Well, that pretty much sums up a week's adventure of making meat stock. Hopefully these 14 cubes will last me a while. Now just what do I do with a quart and a half of animal fat...
