I am taking your post as confirmation that I have been right all along.

And I like to know the recipe for the turkey stock and lentil soup.

We were at my in-laws this year for Thanksgiving, so I had no turkey bones. But I did recently make fresh chicken stock. YUM!

I can’t wait to learn more!

His,
Mrs. U

Many thanks for the “Water better than store bought stock/broth” blog article. My wife has allergies to Onion/Garlic/Pepper, all of which I include when making my own stock so I was about to use Whole Foods “Organic Beefy-like Broth” in a Beef/barley stew thing I was making, even though one of its ingredients is garlic powder.

Upon reading your article I instead went with 4 cups of plain old tap water, using some to deglaze the cast iron skillet I’d browned my chuck steak chunks and the rest going into the dutch oven and was rewarded with a fantastically tasty stew, plenty of beefy flavour from the fond (??? Computer programmer by trade so the terminology may be off) and lots of gelatin from the slow cooking of the chewy chuck steak. The missus loved it and I haven’t had to deal with any “Your trying to poison me!” comments when she finds out I’ve used an ingredient from the “banned list”

Cheap too as the only ingredients were

3lb Chuck Steak at some really low price/lb from supermarket, cubed, defatted (mostly) and then heavily browned
3 Red bliss potatoes, cubed
hand full of small carrots, chopped
couple of sticks of celery, chopped
Bay Leaf
1/2 cup pearl barley
4 cups (or so) of water
3 or so hours in a low, 250/275, oven.

Again, thanks for the impassioned plea to give water a chance, I did and was very happy with the result !

–
Roj

This reminds me of what Anthony Bordain had to say about garlic presses in his book _Kitchen Confidential_. I quote: “The crap that comes out of the end of a garlic press? That’s not garlic.”

Of course it’s garlic. Specifically, it’s crushed and well-pulverized which lead it to be hotter than minced garlic. In fact, many people prefer a stronger flavor in many dishes so, for those tasters, a garlic press is a much more effective use of a cook’s time than producing the same results with a chef’s knife. So why do I think Bourdain was so dismissive of garlic presses? Simple. Mincing garlic takes fine, precise knife work which necessitates lots of practice. It must annoy experienced chefs for a novice and clumsy home cook to spit some macerated garlic out of a garlic press and produce results as good as what his years of hard-earned experience and subtle finesse can produce. In other words, it’s just plain old chef snobbery.

And I think that’s what’s driving Ruhlman to claim that using water is superior to *any* canned or boxed chicken broth. I think that’s a retarded statement to make. If you make two identical batches of vichyssoise, the only difference being that one was made with water and the other made with a good quality chicken broth, does anyone here honestly think that the one made with water will have more flavor?

The only way that using boxed chicken broth could “hurt” the food is if you were comparing the final product made with boxed chicken broth with a final product made with real chicken stock. There is clearly no comparison between boxed chicken broth and homemade chicken stock, particularly since the latter has all that wonderful, unctuous gelatin. But it certainly must chafe a seasoned and experienced chef to see a clumsy home cook pop open a box of Swanson’s and say, “This tastes fine”, particularly after said chef has spend hundreds if not thousands of hours making untold gallons of real chicken stock. It just diminishes the quality and importance of all that hard labor, doesn’t it? I’m sure said chef would much rather sentence a home cook to flavorless water than watch them actually enjoy something so common and so cheap.

An itchy pox on all snobbery, chef or otherwise.

And yes, I’ve made my own chicken and beef stock for years. I also use boxed broth when I don’t have the real stuff, but I vastly prefer to have the real stuff because it’s so much better. Thank you for the charge, Michael, we all should make more stock. But as for the snobbery — ditch that BS!

My sons, ages 9 and 11, really like soup (and will even eat greens like kale and spinach that way), and I take part of the credit because I make stock. The difference over canned broth, or even canned soup, is amazing.

The only real trouble I’ve ever had making stock has been with roasting bones (chicken bones, for example, to make a rich chicken stock) that have bits of meat and fat leftover. I’m finding they tend to burn, or at least smoke heavily, on me…I’m suspecting a problem in technique. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to avoid it? Thanks…

My sons, ages 9 and 11, really like soup (and will even eat greens like kale and spinach that way), and I take part of the credit because I make stock. The difference over canned broth, or even canned soup, is amazing.

The only real trouble I’ve ever had making stock has been with roasting bones (chicken bones, for example, to make a rich chicken stock) that have bits of meat and fat leftover. I’m finding they tend to burn, or at least smoke heavily, on me…I’m suspecting a problem in technique. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to avoid it? Thanks…

Gina, sounds like you did it right. That’s what you want.

I tried the oven technique with the turkey carcass, and it turned out great. I found it easier than on the burner.

I can’t agree more. Ever since reading “Making of…” in 2000, I have become a fanatical stock maker. Needless to say, I left my mom with many quarts of 36+ hour super reduced turkey “consomme”.. I didn’t do the dime test, but after three passes through cheese-cloth, I think I nailed it. Anyway, thank you (and Chef Pardus) for the tips, and my mom thanks you too.

I made an awesome turkey gumbo from some of it, and now have a nice “stock” pile in the freezer.

Now I have to go hit myself for that pun.

I left it on said burner all night and then strained it in the morning, ice bath, and then into the fridge until the next AM. What I arrived to was basically turkey stock jell-0. So I know my stock has major body and had great clarity – but did I take it too far? It turns into liquid when heated.

RE: Lousy tap water. We have horrible tap water (sometimes you can smell the chlorine). I regularly fill four half gallon glass bottles with tap water and let it aerate for 8 hours. I do this at night and usually have enough water for the day. I use this for almost everything I make.

I was going to make stock anyway, so I used this technique. It’s in the refrigerator now. I’ll skim the fat off this afternoon. Stock for months!