On Stock

I’m writing this from beautiful long beach, CA. More on this later.

I wrote the [last recipe I posted here]( http://omnivorousfish.com/node/135) somewhat in haste, and I all but skipped over a topic that I feel is little understood, or at least improperly considered, in cooking: the place of stock.

As we go through our lives as cookbook readers, countless hours have been spent poring over the basic preparations in the backs of the cookbooks written by our favorite chefs and cookbook authors. Many of these sundry recipes- and often whole prose chapters- are dedicated to the topic of stock, its importance and, certainly, its preparation. Interestingly, the role of stock in the greater food consciousness is little discussed. I am here to tell you that homemade stock is not indispensable, or at least, one can still cook without it.

Cooks in restaurants need only go over to the kettle or walk-in to get white or brown stock. On television, a bubbling brew simmers in a shiny overpriced saucepan, ready to be put into service. Indeed, stock, *petits-fours* and *tournee* of vegetables are all well and good if one has a staff, especially a free or nearly free staff of externs, apprentices and dishwashers. Meanwhile, on earth, we all have lives.

I have a job. I’m very fortunate that I have a job that usually leaves me with four free weekdays to do with as I please, so it’s not uncommon that I spend at least one of those days in a complicated cooking preparation, and if that preparation involves meat, rest assured, there will be stock. After all, if the kitchen is already unfurled, what trouble is it to throw the detritus in a pot at the back of the stove? However, that doesn’t mean that I make stock to order. In fact, it often gets made during the course of a simpler preparation. That stock then goes in the freezer. Not in a block, mind you. I might put a cup or two at a time to freeze in small containers, but the majority of the stock I make ends up frozen in ice cube trays. Then I store the cubes in a plastic bag in the freezer, ready to use in increments of about 3 tablespoons. It’s a marvelous system.

Do I always have stock in the freezer? No. I get busy, you get busy, we all scream for ice cream. What, then, do you do when you have the need to cook, but the stock has run dry?

Well, the first answer to that question is, consider what you are making. Remember what is perhaps the oldest cooking truism: the quality of what you are making will be in proportion to the quality of the ingredients that you put into it. It may seem backwards to make this point first, but lest I be accused of heresy, I want to make this absolutely clear: if you are going to make *consomme madrilene* you absolutely must use a great stock. *Sauce Perigord* deserves the time and effort of *glace de viande* that you have fine tuned for your taste and your guests.

But what about a pan sauce? Maybe you’ve fried up some pork chops and apples for dinner and want to have a nice little brown elixir to moisten them, perhaps in the oven for a moment, or just on the plate? You look in the freezer and- forsooth- your scurrilous roommate has used the last of the veal stock. The first thing I would suggest is to look around. Maybe there is some leftover roast beef in the fridge with a ton of gravy on it, or turkey gravy, even. There’s a half empty bottle of wine over there that you weren’t crazy about, and, look, the string beans are ready to be drained of their green, vegetal cooking medium. Taste the water: it tastes like string beans. This is the larger point: you can deglaze the pan with water and have a decent sauce, but the more depth of flavor you put into your choice of liquid, the more depth of flavor your sauce will have. The following is from the ingredients list of a [post on risotto]( http://omnivorousfish.com/node/105):

>stock, water or other flavorful liquid (dried mushroom soaking liquid, cheese rinds (not wax ones) simmered in water for a half hour, half-strength bouillon from Knorr brand cubes, water from cooking vegetables, almost anything)

I don’t expect anyone to have all these things just lying around, but if you cook often, you’d be amazed how often one of these things, or something similar, is staring you in the face. How often have you barbecued steaks and had that big plate full of succulent juice leftover? (For me the answer is never, because I drink and/or sop up anything that’s left, but I’ve seen people throw it away. This is sacrilege.) Pasta water (that is to say the water from cooking pasta) should be bottled and sold.

My point is that anything that has flavor has value, and it is through the frugal conservation of flavor that everyday items can be imbued with uncommon tastiness with little or no effort on the cook’s part.

This brings me to my last and most controversial point: bouillon cubes. Stay with me for a second. I don’t recommend the idle use of bouillon made at the strength recommended on the package. What I do recommend is the judicious use of half or three-quarter strength high-quality condensed stock. I often have an open cube in the box that I might crumble a little corner off of to throw in a simmering pan sauce. Thick soups are done no harm by bouillon, and even if they don’t come to their full zenith as they might with a lovingly made stock, they will be better than they would if made with water.

The great Andre Soltner, in his book The Lutece Cookbook, recommends Knorr brand bouillon cubes by name. If they’re good enough for Andre, they’re good enough for me.