2009/07/29
When you make stock, you simmer bones for a long, long time to cause them to release their flavors and gelatin and nebulous other good stuff. But is the long cooking time required to get the good stuff out of the bones, or to get it into the water?
What if we pre-cooked our bones with a bit of water, sous, vide, for, say, 24 hours, then dumped the contents of the bags into our stockpots, filled them the rest of the way with water, and simmered for an hour? How would the extraction compare to stocks made the normal way?
Posted by Barzelay on 2009/07/29 @ 15:26 | Comments (6) | Meat, Science, Technology
Comments
what would be the benefit of doing it that way? do you cook it for the 24 hours or just soak it?
regardless, i'm probably not going to be able to answer your question.
Posted by: tara at July 29, 2009 6:07 PM
The main benefit is that you don't have to tend to it. You just seal it and put it in the water bath, and come back 24 hours later.
Posted by: Barzelay at July 29, 2009 11:24 PM
i'd encourage you to try this, though conventional wisdom says that the long time plus moisture is required to break down collagen in bones to gelatin.
in one of the spanish restaurants - Can Roca, i think - they make their stocks in a Roner Compact bath, since it allows precise temperature control (for maximum flavor/gelatin extraction) without the agitation that a circulator would create. the results are damn near consomme-clear
Posted by: Jeffje at July 30, 2009 2:27 AM
You're right. Moisture is required to break down the collagen. The question is how much moisture is required. I suspect that the collagen would get broken down well with only a small amount of liquid. It will then require simmering in a large quantity of liquid to actually extract all the gelatin, but that shouldn't take long once it is all broken down.
It requires experimentation. I wish there were a way to accurately test the amount of gelatin extracted (that I could do in my kitchen).
Posted by: Barzelay at July 30, 2009 2:42 AM
Interesting idea - definitely worth a try.
BTW Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck makes his stock in a much shorter time than normal using a Pressure Cooker. That might be even more handy than SVing it although it has the disadvantage of not involving SV, and everything is better with SV - non?
Posted by: joesan at July 30, 2009 7:17 AM
interesting that you talk about this because I just read a little vignette about stock making this afternoon. Something low and slow - although not 24 hours - is needed to denature the proteins and pull them out of the bones.
I am not sure how much liquid is actually needed to denature proteins, but it may be that the bones already have a certain amount of liquid in them. I am not sure how much extra liquid actually needs to be added. Great food for thought.
Posted by: katiek @kitchensidecar at July 31, 2009 10:02 PM