It is personally very satisfying to turn the image below into the image above. The house smells great, you feel a completely undeserved sense of accomplishment, culinary frugality has prevailed, and you have something truly delicious with which to fill your freezer for future meals and to use right away to make scrummy ramen. What's not to like about all of that?
Before L. nixed Thursday soup night, I made a lot more stock because I needed it on a weekly basis. Mostly I just salted water, added a chicken carcass and a few aromatics and made a base stock that way. Now that I make stock for a specific occasion, I put a bit more effort into it.
While I don't make proper ramen stock at home since I don't have access to all of the key ingredients like the dried baby anchovies or eat enough meat to have all the necessary bones for the broth, this version works really well as a home alternate. I freeze various key elements until I need them, namely the (again) the bones. Kombu adds depth of flavor to this, carrots add a touch of sweetness, the greens add a bit of brightness. This is a well rounded, rich stock, deep in flavor.
1 duck or chicken carcass, after roasting and eating
5-6 pork spare rib bones, after roasting and eating ribs
4 carrots, washed
handful carrot greens
1 large shallot, skin on, halved
2-3 scallions, well washed, root ends on is fine
1 thumb sized piece of ginger, peel on is fine, give it an angry bash with the side of a knife first
palm sized piece of kombu
2 tsps whole peppercorns
1 1/2 Tbsps salt
Water to cover - about 12-15 cups
Place all of the ingredients in a large stockpot. Add enough water to ensure that all of the ingredients are submerged.
Cook, covered, over the lowest possible heat, for 90 minutes to two hours, never letting the water get beyond a very low simmer. Check from time to time and slim off the foam that might occur and rise to the surface.
Once the stock is ready, strain it through a fine sieve, pressing down on the solids to extract all flavor.
You can use this at once but I usually refrigerate the stock overnight in a large bowl and remove the disk of congealed fat from the surface in the morning, to make this a bit more healthy, before decanting the collagen rich stock into pint sized containers and freezing them for future ramen - or soup - usage.
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