Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Cooking Clear Soup or Stock

I discovered chef, Jaques Pepin, while reading a question answered on Quora.  If you would like to boil clear soup or stock watch him in this video.  


Here are some tips I picked up from watching this video:

-start boiling the chicken (meat) with cold water so the scum (solidified gelatine from the bone) from it will come to the top.
-do not cover pot while soup is boiling as it will become cloudy.
-remove the scum with a little skimmer during the first 10 minutes of boiling the soup. 
-push fat with ball of laddle and skim it out.
-season soup (he used bay leaf, thyme, black peppercorn, rosemary, and clove).
-reduce heat to simmer soup for 35 minutes.
-turn off heat and let it cool down.
-remove chicken to remove skin and debone it.
-put the bones back into the soup to cook further for 1 hour.
-strain the soup to remove bones and fat by putting a paper towel or two in the strainer.
-you can also keep it in the fridge overnight so that it is easier to remove the cogealed fat.
-wipe pot clean with a paper towel and pour strained soup back in.
-add vegetables to soup to boil for only 20, 25 minutes (he used leak, onion, carrot, butternut squash, mushroom and cabbage).

You can reduce your salt in take in the soup by bringing the flavor up with:
-dry spice like hot pepper, fennel seed, oregano, thyme, rosemary, etc.
-fresh seasoning like onion, parsley chopped, scallion, garlic, the rind of lime and the rind of lemon, cilantro, tarragon, ginger, etc.
-sweet like honey or maple syrup mixed with sour like vinegar, tomato or lemon.
-crystallized the top of meat or fish by heating it on very high heat.

The tips can be applied for making Chinese soups too.

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