Week 5: MEP for Stocks, Soups, and Sauces | Stocks

This week we learned a lot about thickening agents, especially on Day 1. You have to be careful with these, as we learned from Chef, when he added an incredible amount of corn starch into the liquid and the heat completely ruined the mixture (see video below for the horror).

Chef has a way with words... and corn starch. This is him throwing it into the air and watching as it hovers and dissipates. These are the signs of good corn starch... I suppose.

 

This is the catastrophe that is adding too much thickener to a recipe. It completely ruins the consistency and can lost a lot of money for a restaurant.

We learned that one pound of roux will thicken one gallon of liquid to nappe consistency (AKA when you can dip a spoon in the mixture and it does not run when it comes out). We also created our own roux wheel, to see the difference that time can make.

Matt, learning the right way to stir roux, or any dish! The whisk can be used to get all food from the corners of a pan. Almost as handy as the $10,000 tool!

Here is our beautiful Roux color wheel! Our turned out almost perfect, although a perfect one would have been slightly darker at the end. Dark and light roux are both acceptable, as long as it has cooked for at least 7 minutes. It depends on the recipe.

Day 2 was the day of veggie stock. I have always bough pre-made chicken or vegetable stock, so it was great to learn how to create it at home! Our group had the pleasure of burning the heck out of our stock. While this killed Mikki, the rest of us rather enjoyed this.

Mikki hated today. This picture is the best thing ever. A true chef, in her element, crying over burnt vegetables. Hats off to you, Mikki.

I've never seen Brett smile so much...

Brett, almost sampling the burnt veggies. We left them on as long as we could with the given amount of time for stock.

Here is our end result for veggie stock! Believe it or not, it was worse in person. We purposefully burned this, however it would be easy to accidentally do it as well, if you don't know what to look for in the vegetables.

As funny as burning stock can be, I actually gathered more from this because I was able to watch every stage of the color of the vegetables and how it would affect the color of the stock.

In week 1, we learned that you should never use more of an ingredient than necessary, or at all, unless it is completely needed in the recipe. This comes into play with thickening agents, because you do not need to add more and more to quicken the process. You simply have to be patient for the mixture to get hot and completely thicken! Otherwise you may ruin your dish, or waste money and valuable resources.