Vegetable Stock - Page 316

This was the first of five recipes for Sunday.  We wanted to make the Corn Bread and Buttermilk Soup, but that required us to make Corn Bread.  That's a shame, having to make cornbread, and then eat it.  We also needed to make Vegetable Stock, which also reminded us that we were pretty much out of Beef and Chicken Stock.  So 10 hours, 3 stock pots and a bunch of deliciousness later, we had Corn Bread and Buttermilk Soup.  Thanks to Brian and Jen for the excellent loaner stockpot that you're never getting back.

And a s**t ton of stock.

We found the Vegetable Stock recipe to be quite interesting.  I'd never made this before and it was fast.  Running the vegetables through a chopper and then giving them a quick saute before adding water and wine was new to us, but this stock was probably the most aromatic of them all.  It was also less than an hour from start to finish.

We managed to not screw anything up, like the time I strained my stock, and then realized that I had strained it straight down the sink, like it was pasta or something.  That kinda sucked.

Standby for the rest of our Sunday adventures...



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.