58 minutes ago, Hassouni said:Mystery time:
I had 3 chickens in my freezer, and since I'm stuck at home I figured might as well bust out the stockpot. In they went, covered with water, for a very long simmer (about 6-7 hours). Tasting along the way, it was super chickeny and rich. I made about 7-8 quarts, so after straining the solids out I decided to reduce it down to about 5 quarts for easier storage, in a standard sized pot. I then cooled it down in that smaller pot first by putting a ziplock full of ice and water in, and then by floating a stainless steel bowl on top with ice in it, until the liquid was cool enough to put in the fridge. Both the ziplock and the stainless bowl had quite a lot of fat solidify on them, which was then discarded/washed off.
This morning, I checked the chilled stock, expecting it to be very solid and gelatinous and it wasn't! Is it possible that some of the "fat" solidified onto the bag or bowl was actually gelatin? And does gelatin rise to the top, able to be skimmed off? If anything, the reduced stock tastes LESS gelatinous than the unreduced stock did when tasted before straining. What's going on?
Weird. I suppose t hat some gelatin could have exited with the bag/ bowl. The fat would've been only at the top of the bowl and would've been more or less white in color. Gelatin would've been the color of the stock
Were the bones exposed directly to the cooking liquid? I suppose that, if buried in meat, the gelatin couldn't leach out as bone collagen was denatured
