Large Volume Stock Production Logistics

[Chris Amirault]

We have lots of topics around here on stock, but I'm starting a new one in the hopes that we can focus on a particular component of stock-making.

I make a ton of chicken stock every few months, vacuum-seal it, and stick the bags in my freezer to be taken out when needed. I'm going to be doing that this weekend, and I'm already dreading different stages like straining it, cooling it down quickly, and bagging it.

Does anyone have any tried-and-true tips for production logistics of such an operation? I'm all ears.

[JAZ]

What kind of volume are you talking about? Two gallons? Five?

[boondocker]

We make 10 - 20 gallons of stock per week right now.

Plug one of your sinks and make an ice bath in it. Put your receiving container in the sink, pack sink full of ice, strain into your container leaving a couple inches of clarence. Add water to the Ice bath. Full another bain marie with Ice and insert that into the stock like an ice wand - it should stay neutrally bouyant and not tip or sink in.

[MelissaH]

Is there any reason you can't drastically reduce the volume of the stock, and then you'd have less to deal with at the end (and less to store in your freezer)? Then when you use it, you could just add water to replace what you boiled off.

MelissaH

[Edward J]

You can use a rubber hose to strain, a'la cleaning out the aquarium tank.

Start making ice a week before, I like to fill well washed gallon milk jugs with water and freeze them. In addition to the ice batch, plop a frozen jug into the cooling stock, this will dramatically reduce the time to cool.

The ziplock bags usually fit into a jug or pitcher, holding them upright without any hands; seal well and lay flat on a cookie sheet in the freezer. This accomplishes several things:

1) stock freezes very fast

2) stock takes up very little room in the freezer compared to a rounded blob of a freezer bag

3) frozen stock takes very little time to defrost. If in a hurry, you can break the bag in half and quarters and toss in soups/sauces frozen, it will come to a boil very, very quickly.

Hope this helps

[Lisa Shock]

I got one of these: San Jamar Ice Paddle. You can fill it with regular ice and you use it like an ice wand, but, unlike a regular ice wand, you can easily empty it and put more ice in and keep going.

I freeze mine in square or rectangular containers either various steam table type pans or Camwear squares. Once frozen, I pop the stock out and vacuum seal it in bags-essentially forming bricks that stack in the freezer. If you don't have enough containers to do it all at once, refrigerate some of the stock overnight until the first batch is vacuum sealed, and keep going.

[Chris Amirault]

Wow -- guy asks a question and gets a slew of terrific answers! Thanks!

I think I'll be making 3-4 gallons today, and I'm limited in what I have on hand for equipment -- but I do have two deep sinks, so I'll use that quick-chill method. I've never tried the super-reduction approach so I'll give that more thought today. I do have a chamber vacuum sealer that I can set up for filling and sealing bags, so that end is set as long as I can get the stock to cool quickly.

Will report back!

[pep.]

I assume you are already using the pressure cooker method for making the stock?

[slkinsey]

pep. makes a good point. Pressure cooking solves a lot of problems. Clarity is always great right out of the pot, for example. And, of course, the stock cooks in a much shorter period of time, with overall better flavor extraction. I also second Edward J's recommendation to use a rubber racking tube. This works especially well if you have used a pressure cooker, because the stock will be very well stratified with fat on the top, muck on the bottom and a big layer of clear stock in the middle. Siphoning out the stock means minimal disturbance of the muck layer (you can put the tip of the tube into a brand new and boiled stainless of copper scrubber for even more protection against particulates).

[Chris Amirault]

I think that I will have to yield to the pressure of using the pressure cooker for the first time. I've resisted bc I had the sense that I would have to do multiple batches for this volume. We'll see...

[pep.]

How big is your pressure cooker and how much raw materials are using (excluding the water)? For pressure cooked stock you would use a lot less liquid.

[dcarch]

If I was to make large quantities of stock, I might try the following:

1. First go around - Using a large pressure cooker and cook the bones without adding water. You will get a small quantity of the most concentrated stock. Keep this in the freezer.

2. Second go around - pressure cook the bones from the first go around the normal way with water. You will get close to normal stock.

3. Third go around - pressure cook the bones one more time. You will get a very thin stock with not much flavor. Using this thin stock for the second go around the next time.

dcarch

[weinoo]

And, of course, the stock cooks in a much shorter period of time, with overall better flavor extraction.

Really? According to Dave Arnold and Cooking Issues:

We tasted both stocks blind.

The aroma of the pressure cooked stock was clearly superior. The color was deeper as well (because of this all future tests were done actually blind –with our eyes closed). Unfortunately the conventional stock tasted better. It had a stronger chicken flavor and was better balanced overall.

Do read on, however, as it get much more wonky.

[pep.]

http://www.cookingissues.com/2009/11/22/pressure-cooked-stocks-we-got-schooled/

:-)

[JAZ]

I've never tried the super-reduction approach so I'll give that more thought today.

We reduce our stock by either 4 or 8 times (that is, 1 gallon to 1 quart, or 2 gallons to 1 quart), then freeze it in the medium sized silicone ice cube trays (like these). With this size, the cubes are just under 1 ounce, so the math is easy when you go to reconstitute -- if you reduce by 4 times, then one cube produces half a cup of stock; if you reduce by 8, a cube gives you 1 cup.

[Chris Amirault]

Stock project on hold this weekend, will which give me more time to figure it out.

Janet, do you dedicate one of those ice cube trays to this savory purpose?

[JAZ]

No, after they're frozen, we pop the cubes out and into a freezer bag, freeing up the trays. I've never noticed any residual taste after a run through the dishwasher (and mine have been doing double duty for stock and ice for several years).

[haresfur]

I like to freeze stock in ziplock bags laid flat so you get a thin layer that's easy to store and break apart. If you are worried about measuring amounts, then weigh the chunks. I also use these, but they would be a real pain for large volumes.

[OliverB]

I'm wondering, why do you need to quick chill it? It's cooked, there's not going to be anything alive in there that'll make it go bad. I never make gallons, don't have the freezer space, but even if I did, I'd just let it cool down. It'll also get cooked again once you use it, I really don't see where there'd be any danger of contamination. AND you freeze it.

As for storage, I also use ziplock bags and fill them with a cup or two (depending on bag size), lay them flat so I get nice thin packages.

[Lisa Shock]

I'm wondering, why do you need to quick chill it? It's cooked, there's not going to be anything alive in there that'll make it go bad. I never make gallons, don't have the freezer space, but even if I did, I'd just let it cool down. It'll also get cooked again once you use it, I really don't see where there'd be any danger of contamination. AND you freeze it.

As for storage, I also use ziplock bags and fill them with a cup or two (depending on bag size), lay them flat so I get nice thin packages.

Stock contains plenty of food and water for microbes and a pleasant environment for certain spores (which are not killed by boiling) to germinate. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/dining/bending-the-rules-on-bacteria-and-food-safety.html?ref=dining&_r=0

You want to get it to 40°F as quickly as possible. In a restaurant setting, the health code allows 4 hours for that process, after that amount of time the quantity of bacteria growing may be at unsafe levels and, they may be releasing larger and larger quantities of toxic chemicals. -However, a really large stockpot represents a large thermal mass. If left out untouched, it can take much more than 4 hours to cool down just to room temperature. And, most home fridges cannot handle a giant mass of almost boiling liquid -you wind up heating up everything in the fridge making it all unsafe. An ice wand is SOP for cooling pots of liquid because it works well,

[Shalmanese]

I've pretty streamlined my large batch brown poultry stock making procedure:

* Acquire exactly the amount of bones it would take to fill up your largest pot.

* Get your largest pot of water to the boil

* Cut off any large chunks of fat/skin from the chicken carcasses

* Dunk the fat & skin pieces into the boiling water, let it cook until all the pink is gone, then remove with a spider strainer.

* Drop the cooked pieces of fat/skin into a food processor, process until pea sized chunks (the brief blanch makes the skin much easier to chop)

* Put the chopped skin in a non-stick pan with a cup of canola oil, start cooking

* Cook until fat has completely rendered out of the cracklings. You can then either add the cracklings to the stock to add flavor or eat them as a snack (they make an excellent garnish for salads)

* Add the bones one at a time to the rendered fat, keeping the temperature around 325 - 350. If it climbs above 350, add some more bones. As the bones become sufficiently browned, take them out and add them to the large pot of simmering water.

* You can then decant whatever fat is left over and have an incredibly chickeny schmaltz that adds insane flavor. Don't let the oil get much above 350 for too long though as it'll degrade too quickly and you're left with useless broken down oil.

* Cook the bones for 3 hours at a low simmer, then strain and skim off most of the surface fat.

* Put it back in the pot, add your vegetables and cook at a high boil for another hour

* Strain out the vegetables, let the stock chill in the fridge, then remove the fat cap

What you get is a super gelled, crazy intense brown stock that tastes like essence of roast chicken.

I like deep frying the bones instead of roasting them because I think you can get a deeper level of brown without it being burnt. Also, I like cooking the veggies separately during the reduction phase as I feel it leads to a cleaner flavor and also allows you to cram more bones in the pot, leading to more stock.

[slkinsey]

And, of course, the stock cooks in a much shorter period of time, with overall better flavor extraction.

Really? According to Dave Arnold and Cooking Issues:

We tasted both stocks blind.

The aroma of the pressure cooked stock was clearly superior. The color was deeper as well (because of this all future tests were done actually blind –with our eyes closed). Unfortunately the conventional stock tasted better. It had a stronger chicken flavor and was better balanced overall.

Do read on, however, as it get much more wonky.

It's worthy of note that the Modernist Cuisine guys don't seem to agree. I also have a hard time understanding how the aroma could be better on one but the flavor better on the other, since flavor is mostly aroma anyway.

[pep.]

And, of course, the stock cooks in a much shorter period of time, with overall better flavor extraction.

Really? According to Dave Arnold and Cooking Issues:

We tasted both stocks blind.

The aroma of the pressure cooked stock was clearly superior. The color was deeper as well (because of this all future tests were done actually blind –with our eyes closed). Unfortunately the conventional stock tasted better. It had a stronger chicken flavor and was better balanced overall.

Do read on, however, as it get much more wonky.

It's worthy of note that the Modernist Cuisine guys don't seem to agree. I also have a hard time understanding how the aroma could be better on one but the flavor better on the other, since flavor is mostly aroma anyway.

Actually, Dave doesn't agree himself, if you read on:

We ran one more test. Conventional for 1.5 hours vs. the school’s pressure cooker for 45 minutes vs. my pressure cooker for 45 minutes vs. the school’s pressure cooker for 20 minutes (in case we had just been cooking too long and blasting the flavor away).

The results:

My pressure cooker won, followed by the conventional cooking; both of the school’s pressure cookers scored lower. I feel a lot better.

Pressure cooked stock is only better if you use a non-venting pressure cooker.

Edited September 23, 2012 by pep. (log)

[Edward J]

I'm wondering, why do you need to quick chill it? It's cooked, there's not going to be anything alive in there that'll make it go bad.

Lots of protein in there, and water, in stock. Anything that does contain water will eventually go bad--this fact is recognized by every culture in the world, which is why drying, salting, and sugaring foods have been going on for centuries.

In any case, concentrated meat stocks were used in laboratories to line petri dishes for many years--it is the perfect medium to grow any kind of nasty......

[chappie]

Quick stock question:

How long can it keep in the bottom of a very cold fridge? I'm working on six days with a dark chicken stock that was fortified after 4-5 days with the carcass of another roasted victim (so, reboiled in the process) but as I was short on time I simply strained into a large metal bowl, placed the lid on and put it in my garage fridge. That was about six days ago. Can I reboil it tonight and then maybe cool more rapidly and freeze?

I'd hate to lose it at this point.