A Nerd in the Kitchen

I've been cooking again this year.  There was a period where I stopped; well there was a period where a lot of things stopped.  But I am cooking, and cooking for others, although not yet entertaining.  Because I have been cooking for others though, I have also been cooking for myself, and rediscovering my joy at playing in the kitchen, entertaining will come as I pull out of my self-imposed sabbatical.

It was time to make some chicken stock, and remembering my frustration over finding chickens fo stock last Thanksgiving, my frustration over the "thinness" of the stock I made, and my general interest in the quality and sustainability of food, I decided to experiment.

For this experiment I made two small batches of stock in dueling slow cookers.  The ingredients in each slow cooker were identical: Chicken, chicken feet, carrots, celery, onion, parsley, bay leaves, peppercorns, salt, nutmeg, white wine and water. I was careful that the weights and quantities were identical as well.  The only difference was in the actual chickens.  In the first slow cooker (left above) I used a 3 1/2 pound heritage breed pastured chicken, and in the slow cooker on the right above I used a 3 1/2 pound organic but commercially raised chicken.

I also made a third batch of stock, this one in the oven.  It was not really a direct comparison, stock for stock, but a kind of benchmark comparison.  I've made chicken stock in the slow cooker for a long time, but in the last year or two I've also started making an oven stock, originally inspired by Aki Kamozawa and H Alexander Talbot at the blog Ideas In Food.  Like their stock, mine includes cabbage and sliced ginger, but it has evolved over time, inspired by classic French stocks and Barbara Tropp.   I use this stock on its own, but also inspired by Kamozawa and Talbot, I have experimented with using it as a foundation for other stocks, making a double stock (chicken and beef)  and a triple stock (chicken, beef, and pork) that has become my basic ramen broth.

When the stocks were done, I made a simple comparison in terms of how the stocks looked, and tasted.  The stock on the far right is the oven broth.  As you can see it is darker than the others, this is because the chicken and vegetables roast partially in a 350º F oven before I turn the oven down to 200º F.  The roasting adds flavor and the cabbage rounds out the flavor and adds sweetness.  This is a good rich stock, full of intense flavor and that rich mouthfeel from gelatinized cartilage.  It is a wonderful stock for sauces and some soups, but it is too rich and intense for some delicate soups.  I need to thin it with water. It is probably not as rich however as a classic French brown chicken stock, a future opportunity for comparison.

Hence the other stocks.  I've made slow cooker stock for a long time.  Quanities in the slow cooker are smaller than in a stock pot, but so is the time requirement; it is easier to walk away from a slow cooker than a simmering 16 or 20 quart stockpot. But the question was not ease but flavor.  Was there enough of a discernible difference in the quality and flavor of the stock to warrant the extra expense of buying the best quality chicken you can find?

The answer was a resounding yes.  In the photo above the stock made from the heritage chicken is darker than the middle stock, the one made from the conventional organic chicken.  That is partially misleading, as there was more particulate matter in that stock.  After a second straining the color was lighter, but still slightly richer looking than the middle stock, light enough to use in a lightly colored soup, cauliflower, for example, without seriously altering the color.

In terms of flavor however the difference was quite noticeable.  The pastured bird produced a stock that had a rich mouthfeel, not thick, not as rich as the oven stock, but still with a sense of pleasant substance on the tongue.  The flavor was well rounded, noticably chicken broth but with a subtle but well rounded flavor profile.  This broth was so good I wanted to drink a cup of it, and it would be fabulous in a delicate clear broth, and subtle enough to use in other dishes, to enhance without overpowering other flavors.

The organic chicken broth did not fair so well.  Yes, it was identifiable as chicken stock, but really only barely so, and the presence of the vegetable flavors were also more noticeable as separate notes, even though the same proportion of vegetable to chicken had been used in both broths.  It tasted weak.  It is probably fine for use in a soup, but, having tasted the other broth, I had no interest in drinking this as  bouillon. Although it was a good broth, better than purchased broth, the broth from the pastured chicken was so clearly superior that I would think that anything prepared with it would be improved.  

All the stocks were packaged in several sizes of containers:  quart bags, 2T, 1/3 cup and 1/2 cup cubes.  I may compare a simple vegetable soup with the two basic chicken broths, but it probably doesn't really matter.  It seems that the answer is already clear, and quality matters, at least if you are a person like me, a seeker of flavor, a person who prefers less but better, or if you are simply a nerd in the kitchen.

I still think any homemade stock is superior to what you can buy in the store, and economical, more so if you save chicken bones and carcasses and trimmings from good quality vegetables, and if you have a slow cooker, where you can toss it in and forget it while you go to work or to sleep. I still think quality matters, even in basic foundational blocks like stock, perhaps even more so, since flavor is a process of layering. But quality, like everything in life is a matter of choices and compromise.  I usually buy pastured chicken, heritage pastured chicken when I can get it, so using this for my stocks is not a problem, using a mix of bones, wings, feet and an occasional chicken.  This experiment confirmed my suspicion that it is not worth buying something of lesser quality than my usual standard, just because it is cheap, or I can't get what I want.  Better to change the menu, change the plan, change my expectations, wait.  Our real lives are the things we do every moment of every day, every choice we make, in what we do, what we eat, what we say.  Why take that for granted?