Stock

A couple of weeks ago, my brother came over and we cooked up a big meal for our parents. Among other things, we made chicken soup. When my mother saw how the soup was cooking, she exclaimed that it was genius.

Why?

I was using a pasta pot with a built in colander. The vegetables and chicken (bones and all) were in the removable colander. Take it out, and you have broth left in the pot. Chicken meat and vegetables that you might want to add back into the soup are now easy to separate.

I also use this method for other soups and stocks. Until my mother commented upon it, I assumed that this was commonly done in people's kitchens. Maybe it is, and my mother is simply out of touch. Maybe it isn't, and I was just making a weird assumption. It is hard to tell what goes on in other people's kitchens.

Nevertheless, the pasta pot is a great tool for soup-making. Smaller pasta pots are fine for just making pasta, but larger ones are better for making soup. If you're not picky, they can be picked up for about $25. For just a bit more, you can pick up a nice one that will last you a good long time.

So... how do I make chicken soup?

I start with chicken.

I rarely just toss a whole chicken in. You can do that, and it won't be bad, but I like a bit more substance to my soup. That means more bones and more connective tissues. I usually use a package of chicken backs. They have the added benefit of being really cheap. My brother uses chicken feet, a practice I endorse and may adopt. Either way, these are in addition to a whole chicken (brined or, at least, salted) or equivalent parts. Cutting through some of the longer bones (like drumsticks) with a pair of kitchen shears may help release more chicken-ness into your soup.

Then you add your vegetables. My must-haves include carrots, onions (yellow - including the onion skins will help your soup get that lovely yellow color that you want), celery, parsnips, and turnips. My other must-have is a chopped up apple or pear. It works. Leeks are nice, sometimes. If I'm feeling crazy, I might add some tomatoes, and if I want a very thick soup, I'll add a sweet potato.

For herbs, I generally go with parsley, sage, and dill. I go light on the dill. Sometimes I add a bit of thyme. Spices? Pepper is the obvious choice (more on that later this week), but we can play around with other spices like nutmeg, allspice, and mustard seed. Turmeric adds a nice richness in both taste and color. A wee bit of sichuan peppercorn can provide a great counterpoint to the other spices you use.

If I have some parmesan rind sitting around, that might get tossed in, too, to boost the umami flavor.

Add your salt. Don't be shy with it.

Now you have to add your liquid. Unless you want this to cook all day, don't just add water. I usually use vegetable stock from my freezer. I'll also, invariably, add some wine (and/or apple cider if I have it).

If I want my soup to be extra-thick, I may pull out some of the cooked vegetables and broth part way through, puree them in my blender, and then add them back into the pot.

Remember, though, that with all the extra stuff that you are putting in here it is possible to overpower the flavor of chicken. You don't want to do that. Always make sure your ratio of chicken to other things is high. Go ahead and use that strongly-flavored spice... just don't use too much of it... or add some extra chicken wings if you do.

These are my chicken soup secrets. Use them wisely.

Beef tendon is awesome.

What is it? Tendons are what connects muscle to bone. As connective tissue, it is normally very tough and fibrous. When you cook it for a long time at a relatively low temperature, though, it becomes soft and rich and gelatinous - and has been called the new pork belly. It has a mouth-feel that is similar to many fats without the greasiness, but beef tendon is over 99% fat free.

Image by SauceSupreme I love the stuff. To me, it is reminiscent of beef fat (which I also love, but should eat less of). Angela, who doesn't like beef fat, really likes it, too - largely because it isn't greasy.

I've liked tendon for years, but until recently I've only eaten it in pho. Recently, we had an awesome dish of tendon and brisket in brown gravy at a Chinese place (Lai Lai Wok, for locals). Last week, I went to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants with my father. I saw a cold, spicy/tangy beef tendon appetizer on their menu, but my father was being a wimp, and we didn't order it.

So, how do you prepare it? I wasn't sure, so I asked the guy at our local pho place. He said he stews it for about seven hours. OK. Easy enough - especially with a slow cooker. A bit of web-searching showed that you should put it in boiling water first for a bit to clean off any blood (or whatever) that might be clinging to it. Makes sense.

I wandered over to Am-Ko, one of my local Asian groceries, where I found beef tendon in the freezer section for $2.99 a pound. Not bad.

Yes. It is just as easy as putting this stuff into the slow cooker. It turns out amazingly well. On a whim the next day, I took some of the leftovers and chopped it up with some lean ground meat to turn into a burger. What did I get? A burger that was very low in fat, but didn't taste like it was. Pretty cool.

I didn't think of it at the time, but I wonder how the liquid that you cook beef tendon in compare to beef stock. I'd think it would be fairly similar, insofar as you are essentially dissolving connective tissues.

I think there are probably a ton of uses for tendon that I haven't even begun to consider. If you have some ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Today's lunch came together well. Let me tell you its story:

On Saturday, Angela and I were at the grocery store. We decided to pick up something for dinner. Burgers? Sure. We had a jar of pickled beetroot in the cupboard, and we'd been planning on finding out if Australians (who we heard put beets on burgers) are crazy or geniuses. We both like our burgers on the rare side, but I'm wary of pre-ground beef, so I picked up a cheap steak to grind at home.

We needed a side dish. Beet+beef led me to think cabbage. I think it was some sort of weird mental borscht-association.

So, for dinner, we had burgers topped with beets (verdict: better than expected) with some rice (cooked in my electric wok) and red cabbage and onion with soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil.

We had a ton of leftover rice/cabbage stuff - not to mention half a head of raw cabbage.

Last night, I tossed some beef bones (from my freezer, bought at our local Asian grocery) and some vegetable scraps into a pot and made some stock. I used a slotted spoon to pull out the veggie scraps and stuck the pot in the refrigerator.

Today, when I came home for lunch, I pulled out the pot of stock and skimmed the beef fat off the top. I put the fat into a little bowl - no sense in wasting it. I chopped up a bit more cabbage and a carrot and sauteed them in some of the fat in my cast iron frying pan while I heated up the stock. I added the leftover rice and cabbage, and poured some of the stock into it, letting it absorb like a risotto. I repeated this a couple of times (tasted it... added a bit of fish sauce...) then I cracked an egg into the pan. I finished it off with a bit of sweet chili sauce. The result was some sort of mutant cross between bibimbop, fried rice, and risotto. It was really, really good. The flavored rice and cabbage added some depth that contrasted nicely with the fresher taste of the carrot, and the beefy goodness of the broth brought it all together.

I still have about half a head of cabbage and most of the beef broth in my refrigerator. That will probably turn into dinner tomorrow or Wednesday. Oh, I also saved the beef fat. It will keep for a bit and should be good for flavor reinforcement.

Sometimes I love the way that efficiency can flow in the kitchen. It is something I need to work on more. I have a bad tendency to forget about leftovers that I should be thinking of as ingredients for future meals.

Over the weekend, I realized that my vegetable scrap box was getting full, so I made some stock.

I also noticed that I had some frozen chicken bones, so I tossed those in and ended up with chicken soup for dinner.

Usually, when I make stock or soup I stash leftovers in freezer safe containers. This time, I reserved some and froze it in an ice cube tray.

Image by tina vallèsThere's a certain simple beauty that can be attained by taking things that would otherwise be wasted and turning them into something delicious.

I have a middling-sized air-tight plastic container that I keep in the freezer. I toss scraps and ends of vegetables in it. When it starts to get full, I make vegetable stock.