I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." - Henry David Thoreau

In this case, I did the opposite. In essence, I wanted to suck all the life out of marrow. Specifically, I wanted to get as much use as possible out of a brown chicken stock. The process I came to applies equally well to all stocks. I want to explain how I came to a brand new, wonderful ingredient through inspiration from several other sources.

It started with a post a little while ago on A Hunger Artist, Bob Del Grosso's excellent blog:

It's a little embarrassing to admit this, but there was a time in the early 1980's when I used to pull the skin off of chicken to make stock. I seem to recall thinking that removing the skin would make it easier to degrease which, of course, is true. However, skin is loaded with flavorful molecules and contains a large amount of collagen protein which, when heated in the presence of water, breaks down to gelatin. And as most of you know, it is gelatin that gives chicken stock, or any meat stock its "body" or "heft." So removing the skin is stupid.

Duly chastised (I had been removing the skin), I resolved to use the skin the next time I made chicken stock. That happened at some point last week. I roasted chicken scraps--carcasses, wing tips, skin, trimmings--and then made brown stock as usual. As expected, the stock had much more fat in it than it did when made without the skin. I left the stock to chill in the refrigerator in a tall, narrow container. Once the stock had cooled completely, there was a thick layer of fat on the top, with the gelled stock beneath. I started de-fatting the stock, scooping the fat out of the container and into a separate bowl.

I started to throw out the fat, but I happened to smell it before I did. It smelled fantastic, with a similar but more intense aroma than the stock itself! At some point, Shola posted about roast chicken fat on his excellent blog Studiokitchen (I can't find the post). I thought I might get a tasty ingredient by rendering the fat I skimmed to separate out the solids and have stable roast chicken stock fat to keep on hand. So I transferred the fat to a pot, put it over low heat, and checked it occasionally.

When it was all done and rendered, I was left with some nice, transparent (when liquid) fat, and a bunch of crusty brown bits in the pot. I planned on straining out those brown bits and discarding them. But then, I recalled Ideas In Food posting about brown butter solids (and an application here). I realized that this was a similar product. So I tasted these "browned stock solids" and they were amazing. Simply amazing. They tasted like perfectly browned roast chicken skin, except much more intense. And they were crispy! What a product.

I know it doesn't look like much--just poop brown crumbly stuff--but it is one of the most concentrated and delicious things I've ever tasted. Knowing that this will be my end result, I might let them brown just a tad less, but this is now something I'll look forward to any time I make stock. I may even add extra fat to the stock to facilitate the process. This will be a part of any meat-based stock I make in the future. But is there a better name for them than "browned stock solids?"

Posted by Barzelay on 2009/08/27 @ 22:24 | Comments (3) | Poultry

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