Stock making

Early shifts coming up and as Autumn is here, I am making a few long slow cooked dishes. I intend to braise boneless best end of neck tomorrow and a brisket Thursday, both of which will require a good rich stock and some red wine for depth.
Helen says it is almost like a meal in itself and would be good just with some nice bread.
Having been asked how I make my stock by a very nice facebook friend I thought it best to blog it in stages.

First then,
I have roasted some beef and lamb bones. The roasting adds depth of flavour.
This is all about building layers of flavour It will bring depth to the completed dish as well as complement the meat and give a very satisfying finish.

While the Bones are roasting, I prepare some trimmings from the veggies for the dinner.

In this instance some parsnips, a couple of carrots, celery, onions, brocoli stalks and leek stems.

What I often do and will also be doing here is, when we have veg during the week, freeze the trimmings to add to the next batch of stock I make.

This also works with meat trimmings, parts of chicken carcasses etc.

And of course the stock, besides keeping for 3 days in the fridge will freeze and keep also.

So,

the bones are roasted up and the veggie trimmings are ready, now we pop them into a big pot and boil them down. The idea is to get them simmering then reduce the heat to a very low bubble, barely turning over.

Of course I will use the fat and juice from the bones here to colour the parsnips, carrots and onions before adding about 6 litres of water ( however we will be topping the water up a little before we reduce the whole thing down ) I also ran some boiling water over the roasting  pan, thn poured that in too so we dont lose any little bits of flavour.

Then some salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce and bayleaves go in and we simmer.

As an aside here, When  listening to or reading about cooking you might hear the term "mirepoix" this refers to the basis for a lot of french and Italian dishes and is a a chopped mixture of chopped onions, celery and carrots and is not too indistinct from the cajun and " holy trinity of Celery onions and peppers. So part of the basis of the stock here comprises these ( although personally I hate celery )

While this is boiling down, I will tell you that the bones make a very handy trivet to keep the meat from burning on the bottom of the roasting tray and the dog gets the stray bits of meat left from the boiling process. So there's no waste.

When the liquid has reduced by about a third I will top it up with some warm water from the kettle, then reduce it again and leave it bubbling for a bit longer. I will strain it after 3 hours or so ( keeping an eye on it ) then strain it off.

Normally I would leave it to stand overnight usually though not time this time because of time constraints. then reduce it some more down to 3 litres then add a third of a bottle of good red wine and reduce it further.

So we have strained the chunks out ( above ) the liquid went from the bowl it was in, through the fine strainer and muslin ( cheesecloth ) into the wiped clean pan, added the wine and some more water and simmered again.

This will be reduced down by half then allowed to cool in order to skim the fat off the top then use.

so far then it looks like this

So this is a basic stock base, you can use it as I intend to for slow braising ( as in a pot roast) you can make any of the 2 late stages of roux ; 1st being blond roux, fat usually butter)  and flour, with milk. Second stage sandy ( fawn roux) with meat fat flour and juice,

or dark roux 3rd stage using browned flour and dark stock. Espagnole sauce is a good example of use for this.

Enjoy.