Hello, and Consommé

Hi!  I’m Michael.  I’m friends with Helen and company, and I’m excited to be share some of my cooking with you fine people.

This is my kitchen; it’s in Philadelphia.  (I mean, so am I.)

I love to cook: saute, steam, fry, bake, cure, smoke, brew, whatever.  (You can see evidence of most of those in this picture, actually.)  I like to make things myself, to a fault.

But enough about me.  Today we’re making consommé.  Consommé is the apotheosis of stock, made by clarifying a stock with egg whites.  (Yes, egg whites.) It’s something to sip piping hot on a cold, blizzard-y day, but it’s also great as a base for soups and sauces or as a braising liquid.

The technique here is Michael Ruhlman’s, as described in his book Ratio.  The idea is quite simple: to make X consommé, make X stock, then simmer the stock with a mixture of 3 parts (by weight) X, 1 part egg white, and 1 part mirepoix (which itself a 2:1:1 mixture of chopped onions, carrots, and celery).  Typically, X ranges over meat and poultry: veal, beef, and chicken are all common.  This time, it’s chicken consommé.  (This time…ha!  I’ve never made this before.  Here we go!)

Our plan:

1. make a chicken stock
2. strain
3. cool (overnight)
4. skim off the fat
5. bring to a simmer, with more chicken, egg whites, and mirepoix
6. cool again for bagging and freezing

It’s a long process, but there isn’t too much active time.  We’re going to use two stewing chickens and a bunch of chicken feet to build the stock.  (The feet will provide lots of gelatin, which will help provide a rich mouthfeel later on.)  For the clarification, we’ll use boneless thighs.

First, we’ll chop up the chicken feet and some scrap chicken from the freezer.

Small bits make sure we get all the goodness.

For kicks, I took apart the chickens neatly.  You can just maul them to small bits, if you like.  I went at them with the cleaver after taking this picture.

Cover with an inch or so of water and bring to a simmer, say around 180F.  Don’t let it boil, or the stock will be very hazy.  (Whether it’ll be so hazy that the clarification won’t work, I don’t know.  But why go looking for trouble?)

Eventually fat and foamy scum will rise to the top; keep skimming this off until it stops coming.

Rather than fiddling with the heat on my stove, I set my oven to 180F and simmered for four hours.

About two pounds of mirepoix.  Throw in some crushed peppercorns, bay leaves, garlic, herbs, or what-have-you, too.

Adding the mirepoix will cool the stock down again, so it’s easiest to finish it on the stove.  It takes another hour.

Another 45 minutes to an hour of simmering, and we’re ready for straining.  I used a sieve lined with a (very clean!) kitchen towel, but a colander will do just fine.

I should say: this is a perfectly good stopping point.  After it’s cooled a bit, you can see that we already have a tasty, relatively clear stock.  But we have not yet begun to fight!

We’ve been basically following Ruhlman’s recipe, though I’ve slightly increased his quantities: about 4lb of chicken made a little under a gallon of stock.  We’ll use about a pound of meat (15oz) and 5oz each of egg whites and mirepoix.  I’ve added some tomato, for both flavor and color.  (Plus a bay leaf and some ground black pepper.)

Apart from my knife, my most important piece of kitchen equipment is my scale.  Four eggs yielded 5oz of egg whites.

I forgot to photograph the chicken, but I chopped 15oz of boneless chicken thighs (with the fat cut out and rendered for something else) to a paste in the food processor.

We bring the stock, meat, egg whites, and mirepoix up to a simmer, stirring to avoid scorching.  I’m using a flat-edged spoon, as Ruhlman suggests.

As the egg whites congeal, they’ll form what’s called a “raft”, floating all of the other bits to the surface.  The proteins in the egg white will filter the stock as it floats to the top, like a French press in reverse.  This process is a little slow and requires some attention—it took about twenty minutes.

Now that we have a nice raft, we simmer for another hour.  Foam will rise up and over, filtering back through the raft, leaving the scum on top.  Ingenious!

After an hour has elapsed, we’re ready to strain.  The stock is already very clear (look at that shine!), but we’re going to use a sieve lined with a coffee filter to be extra certain.

It’s said that you should be able to read the date off a dime at the bottom a bowl of consommé.  (Ruhlman says the bottom of a gallon.)

Let’s have a closer look.

2007, if you squint.  Not bad.

So: consommé.  I served it garnished with beech mushrooms and scallion greens.  Definitely worth the effort.  I think it’s particularly interesting that unlike many other “luxurious” dishes, consommé is very low in fat.  (Not that I’m into that sort of thing, but still.)  I hope this little (?) walkthrough gives you confidence to try it yourself.

It’s been fun, and there’s more in the pipeline: tongue, morcilla de Burgos, and beer!

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