I just checked out 'stocks' on the site and didn't find anything. Do they play no role in Indian cookery?
I re-discovered stock making over the last year: they're easy to do, and make all the difference to soups and sauces.
Come to think of it, I use my home-made chicken stock in Chicken Mulligatawny Soup, so that's at least one Indian recipe that requires stock.
Just did some game stock last night after we roasted a pheasant: smells great!
Phil
Phil it might be a spelling problem with the 's' on the end, if you put "stock" in the search
you would have found making stock and several recipes on here that use or mention stock (some of which are Indian dishes).
Steve
Aren't most Indian recipes just using a different methodology whereby you are effectively building up a spiced vegetable stock as you go along?
Interestingly I did note the Madras curries call for a cup of stock and of course all the soups!
I asked an Indian friend when I was in India about stocks. He said there was no culture of stocks in India, because they grew their own very quickly there ;?)
In French cooking, stocks are used to give a dish a feeling that it has been roasted or slow cooked for a long time (veg stock is a more recent thing!). Ususal stocks are beef, veal or chicken, but old French cookery books will tell you how to prepare stocks from joints of meat, rather than bones and bits.
I always prepare chicken stock from a carcus. I sprinkle the remains of the day with a little fructose (fruit sugar) that reacts with chicken flesh to form deeply aromatic chicken flavours when fried/roasted. These bits are then simmered for half an hour in water, with added celery, crushed black pepper, some carom seeds (ajwain) instead of thyme and parsley stalks, no salt at this stage. After 30 mins, the liquid flavour is poured off the carcus, and fresh water added, and simmered for another hour, to convert the connective tissue to gelatin. The first lot is not heated for longer than 30 mnutes, as the flavours will be lost to the kitchen atmosphere, smells good but tastes weak.
Never thought about how many meanings 'stock/s' have! What we know in culinary terms, rather nice flowers, what naughty people would be put in to have rotten veggies thrown at them, what we buy and sell on the 'stock exchange'......... the list is endless!
I always start off well intentioned to make chicken stock with a carcass to freeze for later use. However it always smells and tastes so good it always gets converted straight away into chicken soup or "Jewish Penicillin!"
"Jewish Penicillin" Lol!
Actually, chicken soup is very good for ill people, especially those with an upset stomach or fighting the flu. If the soup is made from just chicken, with no carbs added, then ?organisms in the tum will not have anything to feed on, whilst the protein from the chicken is broken down, and reformed to make antibodies to combat the nasties. Same goes for the flu, really, although we can't kill the flu virus (despite what Dettol say) we can help the body help itself. Extra vitamins won't go amiss either.
Night scented stocks, lovely smell, although related to the tobacco plant!
Hiya Lapis
Stocks may be related to the tobacco plant but surely won't do you any harm unless you try to smoke them long term?!!
However EastEnders used to go down to Kent to collect hops each year and suffered 'hop pickers fatigue syndrome' (i.e. just falling asleep.) Apparently it was just to do with the dust content of the hops - valerian (Valeriana officinalis) which is why it is now the main ingredient of any 'over the counter' herbal sleeping pills!!
Thanks, Steve: most interesting. The Wikipedia entry is bang-on, and corresponds almost exactly to how I make stocks, which is comforting.
The interesting thing in the recipe by Mamta and Steve is that you can do an Indian-style stock using spices such as cinnamon and cardamom.
I notice too, from Yan-Kit So, that there are specifically Chinese stocks.
Real stock is way better than those cubes, but I wonder whether the stock pot things currently being advertised by Marco-Paul White (is that his name?) might not be better than the cubes.
I'm amazed at how much you can get out of a boiling fowl: loads of chicken stock, then Chinese yellow curry with the breasts, then the leg flesh in risotto/Singapore noodles. Pretty good, when you consider that the beast costs only 3 or 4 euros!
Phil
the Knorr stock cubes avertised by Marco Pierre White are useless, I bought some to try. No 'stock' ingredients on the label I can identify! We can all do better.
We make home made stock fairly often, most commonly chicken:
Roast chicken and eat what we want.
After dinner, I carefully pick ALL remaining meat off and store in fridge or freezer.
Skin, bones and giblets (except chicken liver which I eat fried as treat) go into our slow cooker with water. Carrots and onion (or cuttings from leek if that's what we have) go in. Sometimes throw in a bay leaf.
Leave on overnight.
In morning have delightfully rich stock.
Sometimes reduce it a bit.
Strain and store in fridge or freezer.
Lapis, Marco doesn't advertise stock cubes, the ones he advertises are "stock pots" which are jellied like real stock.. (or something along those lines in the advert)...
Is use these a lot and find they are pretty decent and do have stock type ingredients (ie the beef has beef in it, with veg and herbs..)
Steve
Steve, I meant the stock pots, not the cubes. I don't have the packet to hand, but I can't remember any beef, it has beef fat, but that's just lard, and the gelling agent is not beef gelatin. It is, IMHO, just processed materials, nothing to do with real stock, and mostly salt (21% if I remember correctly).
I have liked M-P W's cookery books, but now he has reached rock bottom with his selling out to corporate business.
Greetings all
Is it possible to make the stock in a pressure cooker? My understanding on making stockss that all the ingredient are allowed to cook slowly for the 'full
flavour to be released to enhance the stock.
So will blasting it in the pressure cooker be just too quick?
cheers
June
Well remembered Lapis! The main ingredients of the Knorr Stock cubes are indeed water and then Salt. I like my food well seasoned but that was far too salty for me, and besides I prefer to add my own sea salt to dishes.
Now I just stick to the 'Kallo' organic stock cubes when necessary. Still quite salty, but it is sea salt which I find gentler on the tongue but still have to keep reminding myself when cooking add pepper but NO salt!
the thing with making stocks is that you have to develop the flavour, its not just making a soup of what you have got left over.
In the past, for the top restaurants serving French cuisine, stocks had more time and care lavished over them than most dishes. At the end of several hours (up to eight) one had a solution of (unsalted) essence of roast meat, usually beef, veal or chicken, which was used as a base to make sauces and gravies, giving the diner the impression the meat had had been roasted for a long time. Usually the meat hadn't any special treatment, but this enabled the kitchen to prepare food with the flavour of prolonged cooking but served on demand.
Making stocks is a two stage process. The meat (or veg. I suppose) must be either roasted, grilled, fried or braised to provide the deep flavours associated with high heat or prolonged cooking. Once those are removed to the stockpot, the rest is simmered in water until the connective tissue holding all the meat together turns to gelatin, to help thicken and stabilize gravies and sauces (and soups).
I would think a pressure cooker would be very good at breaking down the connective tissue, but not good for developing the roast/braising flavours.