Breaking the Bones

[rgruby]

When I worked briefly in Italy, I saw a practice I've never seen or heard of before or since. Until this thread :Respect your mother.

In short, ice would be periodically added to the stock. They translated it as breaking the bones.

Does anybody else have anything more to add on this? I haven't looked at McGee yet or Herve This to see if they have discussed it.

Anybody else work in a restaurant where they do this?

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

Edited March 31, 2007 by rgruby (log)

[paul o' vendange]

Somewhere, I have seen this, but in light chicken stock only.

One method was to bring it up to simmer, with only some portion of the total water added at the inception of the stock, then, on simmering, adding in ice. The instant cold that results presumably congeals liquified fat and entraps impurities during this process.

The other technique I've seen - going a long way back, now, please forgive any hazy memory - was to add in chicken bones to cold water and, cold, add in ice, leaving it in the refrigerator for several hours, draining off the resulting liquid. I only used this method once, to my recollection, and that was years ago. My only memory is that there was a prodigious amount of blood that was then poured off - much more than other methods I have used, including a blanch-and-rinse.

When I worked briefly in Italy, I saw a practice I've never seen or heard of before or since. Until this thread :Respect your mother.

In short, ice would be periodically added to the stock. They translated it as breaking the bones.

Does anybody else have anything more to add on this? I haven't looked at McGee yet or Herve This to see if they have discussed it.

Anybody else work in a restaurant where they do this?

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

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Edited March 31, 2007 by paul o' vendange (log)

[Mikeb19]

After roasting veal bones for stock (or chicken for dark chicken stock), we'd dump a bucket of ice into the stockpot. You could hear the bones cracking from the sudden change in temperature. We didn't add ice to the stock once it was going though.