Tonkotsu broth for ramen. The first time I tried it at a ramen restaurant that made their own from scratch the traditional way, it blew my mind. The main obstacle is that my roommate would probably object to my keeping a giant pot of bones on a rolling boil for 12 hours.
Rolling boil for 12 hours? That seems just a tad excessive, doesn’t it? It would obviously require close tending, since it would constantly be evaporating…
I can’t really get excited about soups, no matter how supposedly fantastic they are described as being. Even tasty broth is still a lot of hot water talking up a lot of room where the real food should go, ya know?
I thought the challenge with Beef Wellington was judging doneness of the meat when it’s encased in pastry.
I made Beef Wellington many years ago. It was not difficult, and it was great. I followed a pretty standard recipe out of a magazine. The only thing nontraditional is originally the pastry was just a plain dough and not necessarily intended to be eaten, whereas nowadays people use frozen puff pastry dough.
Same.
Duck is both easier to cook and tastier. But the goose skin is sublime. I do it once a year. It’s not really hard if you are accustomed to roasting meat, but you should make sure it’s held up above the fat, and you’ll probably have to remove a lot of fat during the cook.
I never baste goose. It bastes itself. I do like about a thousand holes in the skin before i start.
I agree.
Not for tonkotsu. This isn’t a thin transparent French stock - it’s almost gravy-like in consistency. The long rolling boil is what it takes to get EVERYTHING out of the bones.
Correct. It requires topping off.
That’s called a glace de viande (or just glace or demi-glace, depending on thickness) in the cooking world, which is basically just a stock that’s been further reduced to concentrate it.
That’s a perfect use for a pressure cooker! (Or Instant Pot)
That’s a shitty Wellington, IMO. Pastry should be thick, and still crispy (that’s why the crêpes - or ham if you must - to act as a barrier are a must.).
I have now 
I’m told you just can’t get the same results with a pressure cooker - it’s all about high temperature for a long time.
Also, this is the sort of thing that gets made in 5-10 gallon batches.
AIUI, French cooking shuns pork stocks and broths because they tend to be cloudy. With finished tonkotsu, cloudiness is the goal - the finished broth has an off-white color like coffee with lots of milk.
The first part of that sentence =/= the second part. That is exactly what a stove-top pressure cooker excels at.
That’s how it’s done in restaurants. You can dilute it when it’s done. Lots of dishes are made the traditional way because that’s just the way they’ve always been done.
Anyway, just a thought.
I’ve made venison Wellington twice. It’s somewhat involved, but not really all that hard, you just need to plan the time of letting it set. A probe thermometer makes cooking it a breeze. But I’m not making my own puff pastry, screw that.
I had a beef Wellington once. I doubt it was a great beef Wellington. But the pastry was beautiful and crispy, and the meat was cooked to a nice medium rare, and the accompaniments were all tasty. I didn’t really feel like it was worth the effort to reproduce it, though. A nice roast beef with flaky biscuits or even popovers, and a side of mushrooms would honestly hit all the same points and be easier to make.
I’ve done both, neither is any harder than roasting any other kind of bird, but yes, you do need to be prepared for the amount of fat each generates (you want a deep roasting pan with a rack), and the amount of meat that’s left. Turkeys will feed a lot of people. Ducks and geese, not so much.
It takes a little longer to prep a fatty bird like a duck or goose than to prep a lean bird like a chicken or turkey. And goose is the only bird I’ve cooked where there was a risk of the rendered fat getting deeper than my rack is tall. But yeah, it’s basically the same. And all roasts are pretty easy, IMHO.
I love duck - as far as I’m concerned one bird per person (if that person is me!) - otherwise, yeah, one bird feeds two generally, 4 if you’re serving a lot of dishes along with it in a pinch.
But when it comes to duck, and things you should attempt if you haven’t before, please, by all means save the carcass and render down a lovely duck broth!
Skimmed, scummed, and filtered, with a touch of good ponzu, bok choy, scallions, and shitake mushrooms you have a lovely soup. Or your preferred ingredients as you like.
For that matter, save the fat! It’s just as good IMHO as bacon fat for cooking a number of dishes, especially anything including potatoes.
I assume most people posting in this sort of thread would do so, but if you’re lurking, don’t miss out!
Duck broth is fabulous. I use it instead of pork to make things like pea soup, because my family avoids pork. Duck fat is also tasty. Goose fat is even better than duck fat, but goose broth is meh. Imho.
We have a local food truck which offers as one of its specialties French fries cooked in duck fat. They are quite delicious.
There’s a restaurant in Portland, Maine, named Duckfat.
We once had an incredible experience in a Moroccan restaurant. The next day my gf bought me a tagine.
My first time using it I also made preserved lemons for the dish. Well worth the effort.