The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 198
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{STOCK}
A hundred years ago, when French chefAuguste Escoffier
(perhapsthemostaugustofchefs)codifiedclassicalFrench
cuisine, cooking was based on the production and use of
stock—the rich, savory liquid produced by simmering
animal matter, bones, and vegetables in water for a long
time. Meats were braised in it, vegetables were glazed with
it,soupsandstewswerebuiltonit,anditwasreducedinto
rich sauces. Stock was made from chicken, duck, turkey,
beef, veal, pork, sheep, you name it. If it had four legs or
feathers, it’s good bet that its bones and scraps would
eventuallyfindtheirwayintoasimmeringpot.
These days, stock isn’t quite as essential. Cooking is
lighter,andmanyrestaurantsgetbywithjustchickenstock.
Athome,Iusechickenstockexclusively,andmywifehas
yet to complain that my food just isn’t French enough. For
many recipes, even a good canned broth will do just fine,
though you want to make sure that it’s low sodium so that
youcancontrolthesaltlevelyourself.Mostregularcanned
stocksorbrothsaretoosaltytoreduceintoasauce.
There’sstilloneplacewhereagreatstockisprettymuch
essential:soup.Likeshowdogsandchildren,soupcanonly
beasgoodasthestockit’smadefrom.
Unfortunately, as anyone who’s ever worked in a
restaurant can tell you, making stock is a slow business. It
can take hours to extract flavor and break down the
connective tissue from a pot of chicken bones and scraps.
This isn’t a problem when you’re in the kitchen all day
anyway: just keep a lazy eye on the huge stockpot on the
backburnersimmeringawayforsixhours.Butforahome
cook?Forget it.A couple Sundays a year I’ll give in and
throwtogetherareallytraditionalduckorvealstock,butfor
the other 363 days, I wanted to figure out a faster, better
way.
What’saChicken?
As usual, I started with the basics, and in this case, the
basics are a chicken. Once you’ve stripped away the
feathers and the cluck, a chicken is actually a remarkably
simplebeastinculinaryterms.Itsmattercanbedividedinto
roughlyfourdifferentparts:
• Muscle is what we think of as the meat on the chicken.
It’s the fleshy stuff that twitches and makes the bird go,
and it can be further divided into two categories:slow
twitchandfasttwitch.
•Slow-twitchmusclesaremeantforsustainedmovement—
i.e., the legs and thighs that keep the chicken standing,
walking, and bending down or up. Because slow-twitch
muscles areaerobic (they require oxygen to function),
they are typically dense with capillaries carrying oxygenrichredbloodcells.That’swhytheyappeartobedarker.
• Fast-twitch muscles are used for short bursts of intense
energy—they’re the muscles that are found in chicken
breasts, used to power the wings when a frightened
chicken needs to escape from a dangerous situation.
