Beef Stock - Page 320

We cut down the size of this recipe but still had a whole cow's foot and said heck with it, and used the whole thing.  More connective tissue and collagen can only be a good thing, right?  Both Ox and I are huge stock makers, so we were interested to see what differences Chef Brock had from our methods.  We were happy to see that he did the same pre-boil and discard that we do.  We do it for a couple of reasons: to get a head start on impurity removal and thoroughly clean gross parts like cow's feet.

Stock making is a fairly basic endeavor, and we were feeling pretty clever and successful up until the moment that we began ladling the stock into the strainer I had staged over a container hours before.  Key step was missed, removing the container's lid (though the strainer was much more stable sitting on the lid).  It seems that despite our best efforts, large messes and spills are going to be the hallmark of this endeavor.


Advice: If you are going to make large amounts of stock, we love a turkey fryer with a basket and a wort chiller.  A turkey fryer gets this hot mess out of the kitchen and onto the driveway.  A wort chiller is a coil of copper tubing with tubes at either end that you can connect to a garden hose.  It's used to cool home brew beer down before adding yeast, but is awesome for stock.  Submerge it right after turning the heat off (disinfects it), connect to hose and slowly turn the water on.  200F to 70F in 5 minutes (depending on water supply temp).  I don't know why every professional kitchen doesn't do this. 

I'll talk more about how we store our stock in the next post on Chicken Stock (this recipe was a bit more interesting.)