Food and Drink
Stock Tips
At the Texas Culinary Academy, in Austin, I chopped vegetables, roasted bones—and got a taste of what it’s like to be a chef.
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No one responded, so he supplied the answer: “A stock is a thin, flavorful liquid that is derived from the cooking of bones or vegetables.” We all scribbled away madly.
“Now,” he continued, “what are the uses of stock?”
Several students suggested sauces and soups. Ackerman added consommés, plus braised or simmered dishes like galantines, fancy molded pâtés covered in aspic, a.k.a. jellied stock.
“In short,” he said, punching out the words, “stock is everywhere. You have to be a stock expert. It is as important to a chef as his knife.”
He paused dramatically for this to sink in.
Ackerman, whom we addressed as “Chef” or “Chef Gary,” was a good teacher, patient but demanding. People who work in kitchens, under pressure, are infamous for their black humor, and he was no exception. Asking us to please not traipse through the area where he usually stood, he added, “Unless you’re running for the door holding a bloody stump.” Before he came to the TCA, he had been a chef and a caterer and had owned his own restaurant. His 25 years of experience are typical of the academy’s faculty.
During his talk he covered the basics, explaining terms like “bouquet garni” (a mix of herbs such as thyme and parsley) and “sachet” (a little cheesecloth bag to hold spices and herbs like bay leaves, cloves, and peppercorns), pausing from time to time to demonstrate the steps for making a brown veal stock, absolute perfection always being the goal.
The procedure—in case you want to try this at home, kids—is as follows: First you brown some veal knuckle bones in a 375- or 400-degree oven for an hour, until they turn a dark brown. Meanwhile, prepare a mirepoix (named for, you guessed it, a Frenchman, Charles de Lévis, duc de Mirepoix). It consists of two parts roughly cut onion to one part each celery and carrot, and it makes the stock flavorful and aromatic.
You roast the mirepoix with the veal bones for fifteen minutes, then remove the pan from the oven and brush the bones with tomato paste (canned is used because it is high in acid and is made from ultra-ripe tomatoes). You put the bones and vegetables back in the oven until the paste has caramelized, about ten to fifteen more minutes, then toss everything into a stock pot filled with water (our class had two 24-gallon pots, each two feet tall).
After that, you pour yourself a glass of red wine (you deserve it). When you’re sufficiently relaxed, add a bit of the wine and some hot water to the roasting pan to help dissolve the crusty, dark fond (meaning “foundation”). Then scrape the pan like mad and add those tidbits to the simmering stock-to-be. Finally, throw in a sachet and a bouquet garni. When students queried Ackerman about amounts—“How much tomato paste, Chef?”—he first explained what he was doing and why (“I want a thin layer, so it will dry out and start to caramelize”) and then gave a measurement for the quantity of bones we were using. When someone was surprised that he didn’t use measuring cups or spoons, he said, “Use your judgment. A recipe lets you cook one dish. A technique lets you cook anything.”
Finally it was time for us to do what we had come to do: play with knives and fire and get into trouble. Two students invited me to help them, and we quickly found out how hard it is to keep everything straight when forty people are running around a huge kitchen calling out “Behind you!” as they barrel through on their way to and from the sinks and stoves carrying hot veal bones and greasy pans. Somehow we mistakenly set our oven at 325 degrees instead of 375, and after 45 minutes our veal bones were only a pitiful, pasty beige instead of a yummy brown. Then when our chicken stock boiled over, we turned the flame down so far that it blew out and the stock stopped cooking altogether for who knows how long.
Barely controlled chaos reigned: Every time you bent over to open the oven door, you would whack somebody with your rear end. Getting to a sink was like skiing the giant slalom at the Olympics. Mysterious forces caused tongs and knives to vanish when needed most. After an hour, I concluded that I personally could land a part in any sequel to Dumb and Dumber, but my partners did most things right and we finished on time, including helping wipe and sweep the whole kitchen. Our class’s two communal pots of brown veal stock would simmer for eight to nine hours after we left. When we needed them two days later, they would be ready to go.
On Thursday morning, Ackerman stood in the middle of the class with our veal stock in a pot beside him. He dipped a spoon into it. Voilà! In the intervening day our stock had been miraculously transformed into something rich and strange. Cooked down, strained, and chilled, it had morphed into a beautiful, translucent, solid golden-brown mass: veal Jell-O. He held up a quivering spoonful. “This is amazing stuff,” he said. “You should be proud. Good work!” We basked in the praise. It was thrilling to witness the transformation of such mundane things—bones, vegetables, water—into something so refined.
As Ackerman continued and we got ready to make a series of eight sauces using our stock—demi-glace, espagnole, chasseur, Robert, and more—I thought about how the principles of a culinary education parallel the rules of stock-making: Start with good ingredients, learn the moves, and astonishing changes can happen. The five hours went by in a blur. Somehow our team of three managed to make our eight sauces in the time allotted, and when Ackerman came around to grade them, we got—on a twenty-point scale—eighteens, nineteens, and twenties. Eighteen meant the sauce had a couple of minor flaws; nineteen and twenty meant it was good enough to serve in a restaurant. We were so surprised we just stared at each other, grinning idiotically from ear to ear.
After class was over, I walked down the hall to the academy office and turned in my jacket and toque. Briefly, I thought about asking if I could keep the hat, even though it made my hair stand out like sprigs of parsley. I wasn’t quite ready to give it back.
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