stacey . smoore . the staceyfish . 
Life in a Northern Town: the exploits of an ecstatic Alaskan
Lens: the adventures of a girl and her camera
By now, you've probably picked up on the fact that I'm very much a make-your-own-ingredients sort of cook. It's not hard to notice that one of my very favorite homemade ingredients to have on hand is chicken stock - it's extremely versatile and oh-so-flavorful. A lot of cooks, though, haven't been properly introduced to the joys and benefits of real chicken stock and so they continue to take a shortcut or two, buying insipid broth in aseptic packaging, not fully realizing what they're missing. So, in this entry, I'm going to try to rectify that.
We'll start with a simple eyeball test. The broth, which for full disclosure purposes was Swanson's reduced-sodium chicken broth, is an unappetizing pale, pale yellow color, paler than even the most watered-down lager. It's so pale, in fact, that when photographed with real stock, it's difficult to make the broth the focal point of the photo because your eye is naturally drawn to the more interesting color. This broth it is, of course, a liquid at room temperature, and when refrigerated, it stays completely liquid, which makes you wonder exactly how much "stock" there is, given that it's the first ingredient listed.
The homemade stock, on the other hand, is a yummy rich dark golden brown. If we're going to stick with the beer comparisons, it brings to mind something like Fat Tire or Shiner Bock. Again, it's a liquid at room temperature, but when refrigerated it turns gelatinous, thanks to the gelatin that leeched out of the chicken bones during cooking.
Clearly, looks aren't everything, so we'll move on to a taste test. The broth has a faint chicken flavor with a chemical-y taste that set off my salt-sensitive palate. It does not taste as watery as one would expect based on its color, thanks to the massive amounts of salt, but its flavor is one-dimensional.
However, when you taste the homemade stock, it has a pronounced and robust chicken flavor. You can definitely tell that there were plenty of herbs and chicken-friendly aromatics in the pot with the chicken, but they don't take center stage, they simply compliment the flavor. There is no trace of salt or other flavor-enhancing chemicals because there aren't any.
You may be wondering how each stacks up in the cost department. Prices for the commercial broth and for stock ingredients vary wildly from place to place, so I'm going to talk in generalities. When you buy broth, you are paying for the labor of making the product, for the packaging, and for the (not insignificant) cost of transporting something that is mostly water and is therefore dense and heavy. We'll estimate that you pay about three bucks, give or take, for a quart of chicken stock.
On the other hand, for stock I buy whole chickens. These are cheaper than whole cut-up birds and are even a pittance when compared with boneless skinless chicken breasts. I save what I don't eat and put it in the freezer for a future stock-making day. Many of the ingredients are kitchen scraps: I save carrot tops, celery leaves, onion skins, and extra herbs or veggies that I know I won't use before they go downhill. Again, everything goes in the freezer for stock-making day. So I have to buy very, very little for actual stock: maybe a leek or bit of parsley. My yields are typically huge: upwards of eight quarts, essentially for about a buck fifty after I bought a leek and some parsley.
Next, we'll compare ingredients.
Broth: chicken stock, contains less than 2% of: salt, favoring, dextrose, autolyzed yeast extract, celery juice concentrate, carrot juice concentrate, onion juice concentrate.
Stock: filtered water, two raw chicken carcasses, one roasted chicken carcass, carrots, celery (with leaves), leeks, onions (with skin), shallots (with skin), garlic (with skin), parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, whole peppercorns
Note: my recipe varies batch by batch, so this is was I included this last time I made it. Ingredients are obviously not listed by strictly by weight as they would be on a commercial food label. If you're wondering what the chicken carcass is, it's a whole chicken with the edible bits - breast meat and legs - removed, plus fond from roasted chickens.
Now, let's talk. Moving down the Swanson's ingredient list: after the dubious "chicken stock," it's no surprise that salt is the first ingredient. I'd like more information on what that "flavoring" is, too. It's probably artificial. I don't know what dextrose is, but it sounds like a type of sugar and it's certainly not food. Ah, autolyzed yeast extract: this is where I get really mad! The front of the package boldly proclaims "No MSG!" but here's the rub: autolyzed yeast extract contains MSG. How they can get away with that is beyond me, and it makes me really mad. Finally, we come to vegetable juice concentrate. Sure, mirepoix is great for flavoring, but a) why not use the whole food, and b) doesn't it scare you that they use more "flavor enhancers" than actual real flavor ingredients?
If I labeled my stock the same way they did, I would have one ingredient: chicken stock. Even though my ingredient list is much longer, notice that all of the ingredients are whole foods. My point is that we don't know what is in the "chicken stock" that is the first ingredient on their list. My guess is that it was approximately two chicken bones in four gallons of water, because for a company like that, chicken bones are going to be expensive to use en masse.
If a comparison of the ingredient list hasn't sent you running for the hills, let's look at how they actually perform in the kitchen. I have found out the hard way that using commercial broth as a basis for soups is a recipe for disaster. D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R. I'm so not even kidding here. There is so much salt that it's all you can taste, and if the liquid reduces at all, the broth is rendered completely inedible. A bit of reducing is naturally going to happen during the simmer that soups require, so you can quickly see where this is heading. Just don't do it. On the other hand, homemade stock makes a perfect base for soups. Its rich flavor generally complements soup ingredients, adding interest to even the most basic vegetable soup.
However, homemade stock is not perfect in every situation. Even when diluted, the gelatin in stock interferes with grain dishes, so it's a no-go in things like rice or quinoa. But you can't use commercial broth here either, because guess what happens when cooking grains? The liquid reduces, so... yeah, that's a dealbreaker.
I will grudgingly admit that commercial broth is not horrible in every single situation and, in a pinch, I have been known to use it before. If it's just a small ingredient in a recipe and there are a lot (a lot) of other liquids that allow the terrifyingly huge amounts of sodium to diffuse and dilute, it can be done. I don't recommend it, but in situations like you've just moved into a house and haven't made a pot of stock yet, or you're staying with a loved one who needs to be nursed back to health and they don't have any of the real stuff on hand, it can come in handy as a last resort.
Now for an unbiased look at the two, side by side. I did my very best to represent the two contestants as they really are: I set the light meter by the white plate instead of the subject (the broth or stock), used the exact same exposure, shot them scant minutes apart to ensure uniform lighting, and when editing, used the exact same settings to fix contrast. In my mind, the choice is clear - or, more fittingly, opaque.
So, to sum up, look at it this way: store-bought chicken broth is like Pamela Anderson: a cheap blond bombshell enhanced with chemicals and additives - so processed that you can't even tell that a living creature was the basis for the product before you.
Sometimes we get caught up trying to outdo ourselves in the kitchen, especially when we're trying to impress or entertain. Enough herculean feats of cooking, I say! Sometimes you just have to step back and appreciate the way that we really cook - food that is simple, fresh, and delicious.
If you couldn't already tell, I'm not a big fan of adding fats to everything for flavor. It's a serious cheater route. Anyone can make something laced with butter taste good, but real culinary skill comes from, well, being more sophisticated in your approach to food.
With that, I'm not a big fan of Paula Deen. Shocker, I know, but she represents the worst of the Food Network: someone with no culinary skills beyond cream cheese but with mass marketability (which is why I'm not a big fan of most of the people on that network *cough* Rachel Ray *cough*).
I always joke about how Paula Deen adds a pound of cream cheese to everything. I never thought it was 100% literal, but....
She's managed to add cream cheese to....
... wait for it...
I couldn't believe it. That woman has got some serious cream cheese talent. It's talent she needs to keep to herself, but it's talent nonetheless.
Seeing is believing: link
Happy Thanksgiving menu planning to you all, and for god's sake, leave the cream cheese out of it!
Update: Ye gods!!! She's gone one step beyond cream cheese and - get this - DEEP-FRIED some cranberry sauce!!! That's just offensive. It's like a train wreck, I can't look away. And we wonder why Americans are the fattest people on earth....
Maybe I'm just a huge food snob, but when I see people getting excited about going to chain restaurants like Applebees, Chili's, or Friday's, I just have to shake my head in wonder. Come on, really, the food their sucks. It all tastes like it has been stuffed with preservatives and microwaved and the menu is enough to put me into spasms of yawns. Plus, it's expensive. I will gladly pay good money for good food, but not much pisses me off more than having to pay for a crappy meal. This happened to me a couple of times last week when I had to go out with co-workers for working lunches and all I could think about was how much yummier my sandwich of homemade roasted chicken on homemade oatmeal bread with locally-grown tomatoes and red leaf lettuce would have been. Luckily one of the lunches was free, but at the other place, 90% (literally) of the things on the menu were deep fried. Anger. Much Anger.
Here's where the snobbery (and maybe a bit of being too proud of my own abilities) comes in -- I don't go out to eat much because I can cook better than 90% of the places out there. I'm not saying that I can hold a candle to a Mom-and-Pop-owned hole in the wall Italian place, a fabulous local pizza joint, or a to-die-for breakfast cafe, but let's face it -- most of the food being hawked at Americans is rubbish. You owe it to yourself to do better than that.
Judging from my experiences in restaurants throughout the country, there are two things that the generic American diner seems to want:
1. Salt
2. Fat
Most restaurants are thrilled by this because it's a cheap formula for success. It doesn't take much money -- either through hiring well-skilled cooks or by buying quality ingredients -- to make dishes that have both of those key ingredients. It's like these people have never heard of oregano, sage, or rosemary, much less nutmeg, ginger, cumin, or coriander. The food is incredibly bland yet is guaranteed to be three times what you need, nutritionally devoid, clog your arteries, and raise your blood pressure! (By the way, if you serve me a salad and the greens are comprised of iceberg lettuce -- which has all the nutritional value of water and is a shame to the word 'vegetable' -- you will automatically be relegated to the list of "gross place to eat.")
In contrast to many restaurants, when I'm cooking for myself or for friends I know what will make my tastebuds happy and will keep my friends eagerly accepting my dinner invitations:
1. Fresh quality ingredients
2. An interesting menu that finds delicious ways to incorporate things like veggies
3. A heavy hand with herbs and spices
And that's where the big difference lies: restaurants care -- above all -- about turning a profit. If they turn a profit because their food is good, then great. But the corollary is that if stuffing your food so full of sodium and saturated or trans fats in huge portions to put you into a caloric stupor means they make money, they will do that too. In contrast, my sole aim is to make good food. End of story.
Cooking: It's a lost art in America.
People increasingly have no idea what to do in the kitchen (aside from the microwave, of course), and the scary thing is that many people think this is something to boast about. For hundreds of generations before us, cooking was a basic survival skill. It seems to now be regarded as a luxury, something that can fall by the wayside while we fill our lives with "more important" things. But cooking is the art of nourishing yourself, your family, and your friends -- what could be more important? Another aspect that's being lost is the sense of accomplishment that comes with putting a delicious meal on the table and seeing your own satisfaction reflected on the faces of your dining companions. Now that so many jobs in our society fail to put a finished product in our hands, the kitchen is one place to reclaim the sense of usefulness that you seek.
Where did we go wrong? Why is it extreme to make your own food, to feed yourself well, and do it the way that people did it for thousands of years before this scary food industry came about? Why am I the anomaly because I eat food that I made from scratch in my kitchen instead of buying in the freezer section and popping in the microwave?
Here's the thing about that food industry: they exist to make money. Plain and simple. They are going to do what they need to do to make their food sell so that they can make money and if that means plugging their food so full of preservatives, carcinogens, and saturated fats that your health is sacrificed in the process, they won't care. It's not profitable to care. Corporations don't have consciences, and food corporations are no exception. Besides, once you start cooking your own food from fresh ingredients you start to realize that processed food and most meals in restaurants taste like utter crap.
And that is why I trust very few people with my food preparation.
In fact, I think our society would be much better off if we all heard and understood the adage "if the person who made your food doesn't know you and doesn't care about you as a person, don't expect it to be good for you."
And so with those words, consider this blog launched. It'll be about a love of good food made with my own hands (with perhaps the occasional guest foodie) so that we can all rediscover exactly what the thing we put in our mouths three times a day is all about. Food is too good to be eaten mindlessly!