Convenience products the old-fashioned way

I make a quasi-demiglace all the time -- I don't think I can quite call it demiglace, but I tend to cook down any stock I'm not using immediately until it's reduced as far as it'll go, and then I freeze or refrigerate it in small Zip-Loc cup things. If you're going to be close enough that you'd hear/smell something going wrong, you can pretty much let it simmer unattended and check in on it every hour/halfhour depending on how much you're starting with.

The concentrated stock is useful when I'm making a chicken soup with leftovers, too, and don't think it's got quite enough punch -- I just toss a spoonful in, and boom, soup steroids.

The really fun one, that makes you feel like you should have done a lot of work even though you didn't:

Half cup of heavy cream, whipped with a teaspoon or two of buttermilk
Set out overnight on the counter
Separated liquid poured off, everything else whipped back together with a dash of salt

Boom, you got butter.

Ha! OK, now I want to try that.

I am really tempted to make things like mustard. Or ketchup. I wanted to make some ketchup this summer until I realized that me and my roommates almost never eat ketchup. But we do like mustard. I might still try that.

I did make some pasta today. My noodles came out all "artisan" shaped, since I'm not the most artsy craftsy person in the world. But they're easy enough to make that it seems silly not to, almost!

Ha! Now I know what to call all my odd-shaped attempts - "artisanal"!

I've got to try that butter. We used to be able to get this incredible non-homogenized heavy cream at Whole Foods in glass jars - I bet it would make wonderful butter. I also wanted to try to make clotted cream with it, but they stopped carrying it and only had that ultra-pasteurized stuff.

(My cooking blog.)

Oh hell, I wish I still had a Whole Foods. Bloomington has this place called Bloomingfoods, which is great in some respects, but its presence makes it impossible for Whole Foods to have a market niche. I'll bet that would've done great butter, though, yeah. I've found the butter tends to be harder when cool than storebought butter is, which I assume means the fat content is higher. I've thought about playing around with it like Steingarten, but I know how obsessive and expensive his attempts get, and I don't have the means to FedEx lactic cultures from Wisconsin or anything.

And woo Chris!

Chris have you tried carrot Halva? another sweet way to use up those carrots.

Carrot halva! Sounds ambitious. I'm also not sure I like halva. Sounds like my kind of project!

Chris, I love the fact you will cook things you've never really seen! Popovers - yeah!

I keep thinking that I should buy a profiterole from a bakery or something before I try making one (someday, probably after I get a standing mixer).

(I should have posted this all in the "what have you cooked lately?" thread but I reckon most ILCooking fans tend to read all the threads -- certainly I have no suggestions for lamb or interest in reading up on it (I've been a vegetarian since I was 12) but the board isn't busy enough for me to have to be choosy, it's all good.)

please don't use normal cream if you make profiteroles, otherwise Vic will be most cross, apparently it *has* to be patisserie cream (which is a bit of a bind to make)

choux pastry is a bit of a bugger I've heard. I've never had the guts to try it. confectioners custard isn't a bind to make if you cheat and buy boxes of powdered stuff that you only need to add milk to!

I've just realised that that's not the old fashioned way, sorry!

It will be soon enough! With the slow food movement, etc., the next generation to say "I miss dinner the way Grandma used to make it" will mean "... from a box."

most of the things we buy at the store are pretty easy to make. it's just that you have to assemble the ingredients and then put some elbow grease to them. also, lots of people don't live in places where the raw ingredients are readily available.

people don't make the time to do a stock, make some butter, whip up some mayo, roll out some pasta, etc. or, more importantly, try to do it once, fail, and give up.

and it takes a bunch of practice to get to a satisfying result. once that's achieved, though, it's pretty easy to fit something into a busy schedule.

what bothers me most about buying things from the store is the amount of packaging that goes into something that I can make myself and store in a re-usable container. how many plastic bread bags can you put aside to use again before you become that weirdo with a pantry full of old plastic bread bags?

I feel a rant coming on...

So I made some simple bolognese sauce with some of the homemade tomato paste this past week - it was definitely worth the effort. We bought 10 lbs of tomatoes at the farmers market yesterday and they are simmering away on the stove. I think 3 cups of paste will get us through the winter.

I also tried to make mayonnaisse for the first time this week - the stuff we had in the fridge was ancient and questionable. It turned out surprisingly well - 1 egg yolk, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1/2 tsp. salt, 3/4 cup of good olive oil. You have to whisk it until your arm falls off though and add the oil s-l-o-w-l-y, like a drop at a time at first.

have you tried it in the food processor? works just fine.

did you find that olive oil made for too cloying a mayonnaise? just curious; I like to use just a little olive oil and a more neutral oil for the bulk of the mayo.

also: a friend of mine just told me about making a mayo with soy milk, which I am interested in trying (for when my vegan friends coma a-visiting)

Alas, no food processor. I do have a stand mixer, but have found it not the best for small amounts. Would one of those spiffy immersion blenders work?

Mostly, the mayo tasted of lemon, but the olive oil came through pretty strongly. I'm not normally much of a mayo fan, but I really liked the tang this gave to a roast pork sandwich. I think a blend of olive and maybe safflower would be good. We finished this batch off last night, so I'll go for my second try later this week.

We found out our supplier for organic pasture-ranged eggs has gone out of business, so I may have to find another source before I can make any more.

The spiffy immersion blender with whisk attachment worked great on the second batch of mayo (produced by husband yesterday). We don't use a lot of mayonnaise, so this will probably be a better option for us than having a huge ancient crusty jar in the back of the fridge.

He also brought home a can of Coleman's dry mustard powder, which says all you have to do is mix in some water to make mustard. Sounds suspiciously easy to me.

Heh... mind you don't use it as liberally as you would use French's...

That's hardly "the old fashioned way" of making mustard! Er, I think.

Mr Coleman made his fortune on the mustard you throw away when using powder. He worked out that more got chucked out than used. Try some in cheese sauce or cheese and potato pie though = nummy

I made stocks quite a lot, and don't even think about it any more. Vegetable scraps go into ziploc freezer bags until full, and join roasted bones and leftover chicken carcasses in the pot.

I did make homemade mayo once, and it was delicious, but too rich for me to eat except on something special. For everyday dishes like deviled eggs, commercial mayo does fine.

The only convenience product I've done that was impressive are meat pies/turnovers and maybe the cinnamon rolls, which most people buy in tubes now.

So as an update - I roasted two chickens over the past two weeks, made stock of both and reduced it dramatically. The original 12 quarts of stock reduced to about 1.5 cups of strong jellied chicken essence. Much much handier to store in either the fridge or freezer!

Tonight I reconstituted a tablespoon of the concentrate into 4 cups of water for risotto. The overall verdict is "worth it".

So next weekend, concentrated beef stock is the project.

Does this work with vegetable stock?

I think you could concentrate a vegetable stock just as much. It wouldn't gel, but would get nice and syrupy.

I regularly do this with vegetable stock. I take all my old veggie bits -- carrot tops, cucumber rind, garlic paper, apple cores, and stick them in a box in the freezer. Come stock-making day, I dump 'em into a pot with 1.5 gallons of water, reduce it to 3c, strain it, pour it into a wide-mouth mason jar, and freeze it again. Often, especially with vegetable stock, I add soy sauce instead of salt -- it greatly improves the color, and lends a very nice flavor.

Revive for a dumb question!

Can you make chicken stock from the left over roast bones? I thought maybe you could, as I had 6 drumsticks left over from dinner the other night I threw out, and it seemed a shame.

So - roast carcass, good for stock? Do you have to rinse it/get rid of stuffing etc first? Is it better to use raw chicken? Help!

Also, how long can veggie scraps stay frozen before being stockified? I have some carrot and celery tops in the freezer but theyve been there months, will they be ok?

Trayce - yes you can. Though I'd get rid of the stuffing, and trim off any skin and whatnot (you'll only have to skim it off later anyway.).

Roasted carcasses is the main way I make poultry stock. We generally roast a chicken once a week - I freeze the carcass of one with all the pan drippings, then make up the stock after I roast a second one. I put all the fat and skin in, but I don't stuff ours (maybe some halved lemons, but none of that bready stuff).

I think as long as your frozen veggies aren't freezer-burnt (no ice crystals in with them), they're good to go.

Oh, and I finally made up some of that Coleman's mustard stuff. Yow! Is it ever hot! I mixed it up with 1/2 vinegar, 1/2 water, some brown sugar, and a pinch of salt. Most excellent on grilled brats and kielbasa.