Can I make my turkey broth stronger by boiling it down somewhat?
I made a nice turkey broth yesterday out of the Thanksgiving bird, but I must have put too much water in. (Recipes? Directions? Me? Never!) If I put the pot on the stove and let it boil gently for a while, will the flavour intensify as steam comes off? I think I’m asking if I can “reduce” it a bit, and make it heartier.
Thank you for your tips. (A previous SDMB tip about not putting it on at a high boil seems to have worked–I don’t have that cloudy broth I was getting before.)
Oh–adjunct question! How do I clean the cheesecloth I strained my broth with? Can it go in the washing machine? Should it? It’s got greasy bits and bobs and such clinging to it. I’ve rinsed it in a sink of warm water in the kitchen, but now I’m stumped.
Yes - reduction by half or more will improve the body of your broth. Keep in mind though that you will necessarily lose half or more of the volume. If that leaves you with too little to work with, you may want to augment with canned chicken broth if you don’t have stock (the broth will still have to be reduced, but will put a little more flavor and body in than plain water). If you want it to reduce more quickly, put it in a wide-mouthed pan like a saucier or even a deep skillet. This will increase the surface area of the liquid and help the water to evaporate more quickly.
I got nothin’ on the cheesecloth. I rarely use it.
When you made your broth, did you include any vegetables (such as celery, parsnips, onions, and carrots), and spices (such as peppercorns and bayleaf)?
If the answer is no, I would just simmer some veggies in your turkey broth to add some je ne sais quois.
Also, how many hours did the broth simmer? Did it cook long enough? For me, 4 hours is about right.
I don’t mind reducing the volume–I ended up with more broth than I needed to make soup with, anyway, and so far only made soup from half the broth.
I didn’t toss in any vegetables or spices during the broth-making, but next time I will. Someone else told me to do this, too, but there were no leftover veggies on hand, and I put in onion and celery (sauteed to soften) when the first batch went from broth-making the soup-making stage.
It simmered for a good eight hours or so–most of Saturday, so it was definitely on the stove a long time.
I might just toss the cheesecloth. Seems a waste, though.
Off to simmer the second, not-soup-yet broth batch. Thanks again!
Never put anything into it anything you would not eat [no onion peels, no carrot or potato skins … no manky veggies.]
Do NOT boil. Do not take it over 180 degrees fahrenheit. Boiling does rude coagulaty things to the proteins and makes the broth cloudy. I do recommend saving the neckbone, wing tips [if you trimmed them off] and deglaze the roasting pan into the stock pot. Wrap the bouquet garni in a scrap of gauze. I recommend for 4 quarts of water 2 whole bay leaves, 1 tbsp of chopped fresh thyme, 2 or 3 sage leaves, and 4 or 5 rosemary leaves. Don’t salt at all, and dont pepper.
Do NOT cook for more than 4 hours - poultry bone will ‘dissolve’ into the broth and taste mucky. I heartily recommend just scraping the carrots, peeling the onions and just trimming the bottom root edge of the celery. Leave them mostly whole. I make my stock in a pasta pot - with the insert in. After I have gently simmered the stock for 4 hours, I turn off the heat, pull the insert up and set it on a wire cooling rack over the top of the pot to drain thoroughly. Toss the old veggies, peel the remaining meat off the bones and give it to the cat/dog. The flavor is now gone from them. If you want to add that sillky mouthfeel, you need to add collagen. Just toss in a dozen or so whole chicken wings. The cartillage will dissolve into the stock and add mouthfeel.
After the stock has cooled a bit, put the pot into the fridge and let get thoroughly cold. Skim the now solid fat off the top.
Once the fat is off, you can then gently simmer the stock to reduce it. Fat can get a strong taste if it is simmered in the stock. The reason you dont salt or pepper, or use what would seem to be the right amount of herbs is that you are now concentrating the flavors. Once it has been concentrated down by half, then you can season it, or if you are making soup out of it, put in new fresh vegetables and cut up purchased turkey breast or thigh meat that still has all its flavor. Now you can add another bouquet garni and salt and pepper to taste.
Just toss the gauze, you should be buying cheesecloth for each project. If you must filter through cloth, take a freshly laundered square of old bedsheet muslin, not the gauzy cheesecloth. It can be hemmed and just washed out in the laundry like any piece of cloth.
The only thing I would add to aruvquan’s post is that once you start the reduction, you can either stop when it’s the soup consistency you want, or continue to reduce and concentrate the liquid into demi-glace or even thicker. Once reduced to this concentration, it takes up less storage space in the freezer and can be reconstituted with water at a later date to make soup.
Re herbs in your soup: I prefer to mince up some fresh herbs to put in a bowl and pour the soup over them. You get a wonderful fragrant explosion and the flavors are fresh and intense. Same thing for rice or pasta. Leaving it in the liquid tends to make these items soggy or mushy. Cook rice or egg noodles separately and pour hot soup over them. You’ll thank me.
(Catching up here.) Are you speaking of broth (boiled meat), or stock (simmered bones and aromatics)? I think that you are speaking of stock, and the recommendation that you not boil it is spot on. The high heat of boiling locks the yummy collagen (a very desirable product of stock-making) in the bones, and causes cloudiness as well. The suggestion to chuck your Thanksgiving turkey carcass (and chunks of aromatics, if desired) in a pot of water and heating to 180 - 200 degrees is right on.
There are health issues with things like onion skins. IIRC from the guy I apprenticed with as a chef there are something like 300 fungus types that can grow inside the layers of onion skins and something like 30 or 40 of them can be fairly toxic even after cooking. Yup, that blackish powdery stuff is a fungus, and apparently the reddish powdery stuff is too … and I particularly dont care to kill off myself or guests=)
As to veggie skins, if you wouldnt eat them in the first place, why are you using them at all? I admit i will save up the celery leaves from chopping celery, and leftover bits of chopped onion that are surplus to the amount I actually need at the time but those would have been eaten if the recipe needed eithrr the leaves or the excess onion. Heck, much of the time the celery leaves are what I nosh on while I am cooking.
Actually you can be lazy and toss broken bones [beef leg bones, veal knuckles for a classic stock, a combination of picnic ham and fresh pork leg bone but NEVER smoked neck bones for a pork broth, chicken or turkey and duck/goose for a poultry stock along with onions carrots and celery added about 45 minutes after the bones have been roasting into my farberware heavy covered roaster with the top off.
I then get really lazy and just top it off with a gallon of water or 2 pop the cover back on and set back in the hot 200 degree oven for about an hour or so, then dump it all into a larger pasta pot, add more water to get all the bits off the roasting pan and finish on the stovetop.
Oh, never combine beef and pork, tastes oddly metallic for some reason. You really should make one type of stock [beef, poultry or pork] at a time. I like to combine goose/duck with either the chicken or turkey as it seems richer, like adding the beef to veal makes the white stock [unroasted bones] or brown stock [roasted bones] and smoked neck bones are way too strong for most stocks and really are good only for cooking with beans/legumes that can stand up to the strong flavor.
Huh. I’ve always kept the onion skins on to help with the color. Never noticed any ill effects. Interesting.
edit: I’m looking on Google, and keeping onion skins on seems to be a fairly normal way of doing things. IIRC, the professional kitchen I worked at used to keep the skins on in their stockpots, as well.
Also, other than cooking down the stock–and I’m not ashamed to admit this–but if I don’t feel like waiting the extra hours, I just cheat and put in some bullion cubes. Or, if you’re lucky and have thought ahead, you can always stir in some glace de viande or some other super-reduced stock to perk up a weak broth.
