https://blog.andymatuschak.org/post/8092537664/vegetable-stock-my-secret-lover

 
Andy
Matuschak.
 
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  * 2011-07-26

    Vegetable stock: my secret lover

    After learning how to season food correctly, homemade stock is
    the single best thing anyone can do for his cooking. A stock is a
    liquid extraction of complementary flavors, a broad palette upon
    which sharper splashes of color may be painted.

    Stock is about balance and intensity of flavor. Making a mushroom
    sauce? If you were to just puree some cooked mushrooms, the
    isolated flavor would taste harsh, but add some stock and it will
    gain balancing sweet and vegetal notes. Those carrots need more
    flavor? Simmer them in stock instead of water: stocks are
    distillations of elemental flavors. They can be diluted or
    concentrated at will.

    I credit stock with much of my ability to impress in the kitchen.
    They're as much cooking technique as they are ingredient. But,
    you keen, they're too hard to make! They take too long! Nay. Sit
    down. Let me tell you about my favorite stock. I make it almost
    weekly, and it's so easy that I am positively mystified why every
    cook in every household isn't making this elixir regularly. Let
    me tell you about vegetable stock, and let me tell you how to
    make it.

    image

    I made nasturtium soup this weekend, and the subsequent dinner's
    conversation remained imperturbably anchored to how unbelievably
    tasty it was. Yet it consisted of nothing more than nasturtium
    leaves pureed with vegetable stock, with a nasturtium flower for
    garnish.

    Consider how else you might make this soup. You've got some
    nasturtium leaves: fine. How will you turn that into a soup?
    You'll need to add some liquid, clearly. Looking around the
    internet, I see a minefield of misguided ideas. Steep the leaves?
    That will diminish their brightness. No, they need to be pureed
    uncooked. But with what? Cream? That will dull the leaves'
    radish-y spice. Chicken broth or stock? The flavor of nasturtium
    is too delicate: you'll overpower it. Thicken with potato? We
    don't need filler here. Water? The result will taste thin and
    incomplete, lacking sweetness and umami.

    Puree the leaves with vegetable stock and it will taste like a
    garden. It will taste like it smelled when you went back there to
    pick the nasturtium. It will taste like sitting in a park in
    spring. And then the horseradish spice of the leaves will give
    you a hearty, well-rounded slap and bring you back to the
    kitchen.

    Making vegetable stock

    Get three large carrots, an onion, two leeks, and a bulb of
    fennel. Peel the carrots and onion; discard all but the white and
    light-green part of the leeks. Wash the leeks and fennel. Chop
    everything up finely and put it in a big pot with a few glugs of
    oil.

    Now you're going to sweeten up these vegetables by cooking them
    over low heat. You don't want to brown them--that will make a
    darker, richer variant of this stock, which should be bright and
    clean. Add a large three-fingered pinch of salt to draw out the
    vegetables' juices and turn the heat to low. Cook, stirring
    occasionally, for about fifteen minutes. Taste an onion. It
    should be quite sweet.

    Add enough water to cover the vegetables, then add that amount of
    water twice more. Bring the water to a bare simmer and then let
    it cook for forty-five minutes.

    Strain the stock. That's it. Store it in your fridge, but the
    stock will lose its brightness after a few days. That's why, when
    America's Test Kitchen set out to find the best grocery store
    vegetable stock, they concluded that all of them were unusable.

    This stock provides a mostly neutral foundation for flavor. You
    can adjust for its intended purpose readily and
    improvisationally. Want grassier flavors? Add half a bunch of
    parsley. Heartier? Brown the vegetables while sauteing them.
    Asian flavors? Add ginger, a little lemongrass, and star anise.
    And so on.

    How else you might use this stock

    Reduce the stock by half, add salt and some fresh lemon juice;
    and you will have the best vegetable broth you've ever tasted.
    Add a bunch of fresh, perfectly-cooked summer vegetables
    immediately before serving and you will wow people. One friend,
    tasting in disbelief, asked how much honey I added to make it so
    sweet. I told him "three carrots."

    Make risotto with it. Cook pasta in it. Any vegetable which you
    would normally cook by simmering in water (carrots, potatoes,
    turnips, pearl onions...)? Cook them in this with a healthy dose of
    salt. Make a fantastic sauce for any dish by pureeing a
    complementary, perfectly-cooked vegetable with reduced stock.
    Season it and use it in place of store-bought chicken broth: that
    stuff tastes like industrial chemicals.

    Once you've got this down, no one will have to persuade you to
    learn about chicken, veal, pork, fish, and mushroom stocks.

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