Welcome to this episode of Demystified bought to you from the team behind Cooking with Steam. During a recording of From the Kitchen, Paul made mention of having used a master stock in the cooking process for a beef oxtail dish. So, not knowing much about master stocks Linda asked Paul to discuss how they are made, when they are used, why they are used and do they really last for years?
Notes were promised to add to this episode and they are coming. In brief, there are some tips for making and using master stocks:
– essential ingredients:
• Water
• Shaoxing wine
• Soy Sauce
• Mandarin peel
• Palm Sugar (yellow Sugar)
• Star Anise
• Ginger
• Lemongrass
• Cinnamon Quills
• Coriander Seeds
• Sechuan Pepper
• Chilli
• Cardamon Seeds
• Dried Shittake mushrooms (optional)
– always let cool in the fridge and remove the fat that solidifies in the liquid.
– always bring the master stock to the boil before use
– never mix proteins – meaning if you poach beef in the master stock then only use it to poach beef. Do not use to poach chicken or veal or lamb
– for quantities and method please visit our website.
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For information on how to obtain a copy of Demystified, our cookbook, please visit:
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Hello and welcome to this episode of demystified as we explore home cooking in a modern World hello I’m Linda and I’m here with my friend Paul morning Paul morning it’s very cold it’s very cold chilly morning here in cold brny not sunny brny Paul one thing that you mentioned in our from the kitchen wrap up last week which I thought we haven’t really touched on
Other than maybe in a couple of mentions when we were doing cooking for the apocalypse was Master stocks yeah well let’s just or or stocks stocks yeah so Master you use the term a master stock yeah so Master stock is its own thing mhm um so and stocks in general
I I could say fish beef chicken lamb pork duck ve turkey whatever but a master stock is a uh Asian Chinese particular stock um and it’s called a master stock because it gets reused for years and years and years and years and years kind of like
Years and years and years yeah oh wow kind of like sort of s culture sort of thing so Master stock um is made from water spices like stares cassier bark there’re a couple of particular things which go into a master stock um Mandarin pel is one which is
You don’t come across it that often um particularly dried Mandarin pill took me a while to find it but it’s it’s out there you can get it um and things like Yellow Rock Sugar Shing wine soy sauce sauce so the base of it is uh there’s no
Protein base um and you generally will poach a protein in or braze a protein in that stock and then the idea being is that once it’s cooked you strain off your stock I usually set mine in the fridge so any fat from whatever it is I’ve cooked in that stock
Rises to the top I remove the fat bring it back up to the boil strain it and you just add to it with essentially water and you can always add a few more spices so Ginger and yeah there’s a million variations of it but yeah you just keep
It and keep it and keep it and it develops a depth of flavor over a long period of time so if you’ve ever been to a Chinese restaurant or seen walk past a Chinese restaurant you see those sort of really golden colored chickens hanging up in the windows and stuff like that
They’ve generally been done in a in a master stock so it’s like they they’re poached in a master St and that’s where the that rich deep color comes from um so quite often you’ll see chicken is a really common one um so you effectively poach your chicken within the stock um
And then some places depending on where you are you can then you deep fry or pan fry or roast or something like that so it’s part of a longer cooking process of course you can just poach and use some of the poaching liquid as a source to a
Poach chicken um which is pretty common but Master stock is different to when I say stocks um so like beef chicken lamb turkey duck pork so they’re effectively for me just bones and water so Master stock is its own recipe if you like and no actual protein in the
Preparation of it not in the preparation of it no you cook a protein in it so you have to punch it full of flavor at the start um and it’s quite particular it’s quite specific so a lot of restaurants will will have had a 10 year 15 year Master stock really well that’s
Something I didn’t know so as long as you remove um you know the fat and the uh impurities um yeah you can just keep topping it up generally they’ll top it up with a little bit of water you might add some fresh ginger more fresh ingredients just to lift it um but the
Heart of the stock so if you’ve got a chicken master stock so you’ve done chicken in a master stock you will only use that Master stock well I would only use that Master stock going forward for chicken and maybe Duck so you stick to poultry you don’t often
See I mean it is out there but you don’t often see red meat Master stocks so the recipe I did the other day which was O stle in a master stock so that Master stock has now got a beef flavor to it um if I’m going to use it again I’ll
Use it only for beef so ve would be no lamb would be no it will only be beef so yeah a master stock is kind of like you know a stock without any protein in it like you say but it’s its own thing um so a chicken stock you can
Add to a beef dish quite easily or even a fish dish whereas a master stock once you add a protein to it it’s got its own life and then you just keep it forever how much would you make if you’re going to make a master stock would you make a
Liter two liters uh well for home Cooks I’d say you’d probably start with maybe two two lit is enough because it will reduce over time um but it’s a great thing to have in the fridge like do you keep it in the fridge or the freezer
Fridge I mean if you’re going to use it semi-regularly in the fridge but it’s really important to get the impurities out of it so when I say the impurities once you’ve made the stock and you’ve done whatever you’re going to do with it strain all of the spices
Out uh make sure you remove the the fat from whatever it is that you’ve cooked in that stock so I’ll show you the one I’ve got later it’s got a big layer of fat on top I’ll just get rid of all of that I’ll bring the stock up to the boil
It’s always got to come back up to the boil just for safety um bring it up to the boil and then I’ll strain it again and stick it in the fridge and it’ll just sit there okay and as long as it’s in the fridge and there’s no impurities in it
You’ll need to yeah you’ll need to it’s not going to keep forever and ever and ever unless you attend to it so you’ll need to if you’re not going to use it for a month you’ll probably need to bring it up to the boil just to cook out any bacteria or
Anything that’s developed so you’ll need to bring it up to the bo of course you can keep it in the freezer um but when you put things in the freezer some depending on your freezer and depending on the conditions and all the rest of it you can get ice crystals
Forming which is water which is not a bad thing really for that because it’s not a source that you’re making from it really it’s a poaching liquor and why would you use it what sort of purpose does it have in the process huge amount of flavor to inject
Flavor into the protein before you maybe just Brown it off or roast it or do whatever yeah yeah flavor and color so you get quite a bit of color a really rich sort of golden caramel Hue to whatever it is you’re cooking I mean with red meat you can’t see it as much
Certainly chicken like it’s quite noticeable um so if you just as an example if you wanted to do you know how we did roast chicken and we Brin it right so it’s not the same as BR cuz BR you don’t cook at the start when you br
Your chicken but if you do do a chicken and really slowly poach it in a master stock and then let it dry in the fridge and then roast it the color you will get on that chicken and the flavor is unbelievable like it really gets them I mean it’s quite powerful it’s not
You’re not going to drink it as a soup the master stock that is um but you certainly get some yeah some pretty serious color in there okay yeah so it’s it’s it’s different to a beef stock a chicken stock lamb stock like I said so it is its own
Thing so in these times at the moment when we’ve maybe got a little bit more time on our hands it’s pretty easy to prep plan ahead you can make the stock yeah and then and there’s no I mean there are a few things which I think
Have to go in there so Ching wine is one it’s a major component of it um soy sauce of course Mandarin peel there’s a couple of things in there uh if you can get yellow Rock Sugar rather than palm sugar it’s just different um so it’s got that spicy
Sweet salty thing happening a little bit um and as you work with it over time it gets better and better and better so I put dried shitake mushrooms in mine Al a lot of people don’t um but I like that sort of real Savory and the IT term and
I hate it but that umami flavor you get from mushrooms um no I actually don’t know that flavor anyway what really subtle yeah but it’s just it’s more not for the mushroom flavor for the Savory sort of part of it um lemong gr you can you know
Make your own up but really to keep it and keep it for a length of time you just have to look after it and maintain it why why do you say shaing sauce Shing wine Shing wine sorry what what do you mean why do I say when when you say it’s
Absolutely critical why is that um uh there are a few things within a master stock which so like kind of okay if we were making a chicken stock with chicken bones and water if we compare chassing wine to chicken bones you can’t make a chicken stock without chicken bones you can’t
Make Master stock without chassing one okay so and how do you spell it for those of us who can’t there are few the X one is it yeah there yeah I mean I’m not an expert in um Chinese but it’s I think s h o x i n g okay two words I
Might do a little bit of research and when I post the podcast yeah put some notes about that in and there’s different like levels of Shing wine so in China it’s really highly prized ingredient and you get like you like you would get age balsamic it’s not vinegar
But like you would get age balsamic you get chassing wine which is I think 3 five8 years which are all for cooking and then you get 30e which is for drinking actually oh wow yeah so it’s a but it’s a very WID and it’s cheap like
You don’t need to go and buy 30-year chassing wine um you get a L bottle of chassing wine for like $4 it’s cheap cheap but it’s just an integral part okay it’s really hard to explain the the flavor of it and if you can’t find it you can use things like it’s it’s
Actually you know what it’s really s similar to Cherry like a dry sherry okay so if you can’t find chassing wine a dry sherry is it and maybe intitute in the podcast notes we could put some quantities in yeah for two L of Li of
Water what would you put in in terms of the other yeah yeah we could do that yeah but on the the broader topic of stocks um so for me and I think I’ve mentioned this before but in the case of a chicken stock or beef stock a lamb
Stock a ve stock a turkey stock um fish and shellfish will leave aside for a second all of those things you have effectively two versions one is a white and one is a brown um a white chicken stock for me is chicken bones and water just raw chicken bones and
Water it’s really important with these stocks you bring them up to the boil really important they have to come up to the boil and then turn them down and let them sing simmer now the longer you let it simmer the more potent they will be because you get
Evaporation um of the liquid intensifies the flavor and a brown chicken stock is roast roed bones so you roast your bones first and then you add them to water and then you do the same process now you’ll see every man in his dog put what we call miroa so carrot celery onion
Leak um and things like bay leaves peppercorns maybe some thyme or something like that this is for your classic sort of Base stocks I don’t put vegetables the only the only time I put vegetables in a stock is fish stock and vegetable stock so for every other stock
That I make I just do the bones and Water because when I’m making a chicken stock I want it to taste like chicken I don’t want it to taste like chicken and vegetables I want it to taste like chicken fish is a little bit different because a fish stock for me is a very brief cook whereas a chicken stock I’m
Talking five six seven eight out at least same with beef ve duck all of the rest of them lamb um so I just use water and the bones the other benefit of that is is that if I cooked vegetables and chicken in a stock together for 6 hours
7 hours the vegetables as you could imagine break down and go to almost like slush by the time you strain it and do all the rest of it and you get a lot of impurity from the vegetables like you get the fibers and all the rest of it
And it will make your stock cloudy if you just use the bones of whatever it is stock you’re making and water your stock will be much clearer your stocks I think white or brown should look like um so they’ll be different colors but should have the clarity of like a nicely
Brewed cup of tea that’s the best way to describe it so even if you’ve got a white chicken stock yeah it’ll have that sort of slight sort of Haze of different color it’s not going to look like water but it’ll be a different color but the clarity of it
Should be like a cup of tea and a brown chicken stock the same it should be like a cup of tea now fish stock fish stock for me you only do fish stocks for about 20 minutes max um because you’re not going to get there’s not a lot of benefit to
Overcooking a fish stock um so with fish I do onion celery leak a few Peppercorns in a bit of bay leaf um and fish is in a stock form is a little bit more potent so you can smell it a lot more the flavor is a lot bigger than a chicken
Stock after 20 minutes if that makes sense so if we put a fish stock for 20 minutes and a chicken stock for 20 minutes the chicken stock you’ll probably get really slight chickeny flavor very mild a fish stock for 20 minutes it tastes like fish you can
Smell it taste it okay it’s really quite strong so vegetable stock is totally different again um so vegetable stock I don’t go any more than sort of 40 minutes um and you can do a brown vegetable stock too so you roast your vegetables but you stick to those sort
Of that classic miror chicken uh sorry carrot celery lak onion bay leaves peppercorns garlic if you want um but fish stocks yeah a little bit of egge but stick with the stick with the white vegetables so when I say white celery leak onion I don’t do carrot um bay
Leaves little bit of Dill fennel is another good one those Ana seed flavors um and then you have other stocks like shellfish stocks so like prawn Lobster all of those sorts of things uh crab so the basis of like things like a booy base or booy Bas is you know shellfish
And whole fish but uh a bisque let’s say um so there are two options there one is let’s say you’re making a crab stock one is to just go crab straight in pot of water and I would do the same with some vegetables but I’d crush the shells
Okay to let some of the flavor out uh but you get a better more flavorful Crab stock or prawn stock or Lobster or whatever it is um by roasting them so actually selfish benefits from being roasted first and that color you get that sort of red orangey red Hue quite
Often depending on where you go and what restaurant you’ll go to sometimes it’ll be natural uh and sometimes you’ll find a little bit of tomato paste at it just to give that oh yeah that red um color that you associate with with like a crab bis or something like
That so yeah there’s two versions of stocks and well you know in your general stocks chicken beef turkey duck Glam pork white and brown uh and if you’re going to do a brown stock when you roast your bones don’t just I mean don’t use a whole chicken right it’s kind of a waste
Get chicken necks get off Cuts get chicken wings are quite often good um even the tips of chicken wings uh carcasses don’t use like prium Premium Cuts of the Chicken use the secondary cuts chicken necks are quite good because they’ve got a bit of um like gelatin in them um if you want
To make a really thick or a more viscous stock um with let’s say a beef or a lamb stock or ask you a butcher for a pig Trotter and get them to slice it in half um so that’ll give you a little bit more viscosity so down the track if you want
To reduce your stock to make a sauce um yeah you can do that but stocks are like the basis of like so many things so a bra almost every classic French sauce almost is stock based so when you read you probably don’t read them that often but things like a vute a
Vute is kind of like a bashal sauce but made with stock rather than milk so that same process of making a r of butter and flour and you cook that out and then you add stock to it that’s a uto and then you can add cream to to it which makes
It another source and then you add this which makes it another source they are the bases so most kitchens as a just flat general rule of thumb will have a chicken stock a white chicken stock because that can be used for making a risotto to go with
Fish because it’s not super strong let’s say uh so you have a white chicken stock and either a generally a ve stock is the other one beef’s really strong so a lot of the time they’ll go with ve and they’ll be the two basis of of a lot of
Sources um something even soups and things like that so french onion soup is a combination of chicken onions and a whole ton of them um chicken stock and ve stock together oh okay so there’s also things like that classic Vietnamese soup fur mhm uh that’s a white chicken and beef stock cooked together
Okay with a whole heap of spices and all the rest of it but they’re not roasted that’s how they get that nice clear but flavorful soup and they actually put chicken bones and beef bones together in the pot oh wow yeah so is yeah I think everyone who’s lived in a little while
In particularly Australia which has got Vietnamese restaurants in every uh suburb yeah we’ve all try to fur and they’re fantastic well I know know I think we talked about this before but having that roast chicken and making stock out of the bones was great to have in the
Freezer for those times that I made risoto a light soup for lunch yeah and I mean like having just having it there yeah quite often people um you know ask me what’s my sort of guilty food or what’s my guilty pleasure thing or where I’ve something I really
Enjoy that I don’t make myself so peing duck is one thing so I if I want to have peaking duck and I’m talking classic peaking duck with the pancakes the hoent sauce the cucumber springy onion and the duck itself sometimes I’ll do a bit of a
Cheat and just go and buy a whole duck if I can’t be bothered going through the process of roasting my own um but I always keep the carcass of that and make a stock out of that cuz it’s got huge amounts of flavor left in the carcass so
Any carcasses that you’re left with you can make a stock out of you can make a stock out of almost anything so if you wanted to no I’m not saying that you would but you know how something like a roast potato has a really distinctive flavor yeah there’s
Nothing like the flavor of a roast potato yeah effectively what you could do is roast potatoes and then once they’re roasted add water to the water to it and make a roasted potato stock why not well why not yeah yeah I mean it’s probably a waste of good roasted potatoes but nonetheless like
But you could why so if you’ve got now I’m not saying this is the ideal way to go about it but sometimes I mean I did this the other day at home em said to me oh we’ve got a whole HP of vegetables and I said I’ll just do a big try of
Roasted vegetables and we’ll have some whatever and we had leftover and then I was looking at the roast of vegetables and they were a bit sad and I’ve been in the fridge for a day or so and I was like I they’re not appealing anymore um but what I did was
I just added them so not an abundance of water just a bit of water and I just made a roasted vegetable stock so I didn’t cook for very long u and I just added that to a soup which I made oh nice just to give that kick roasted
Vegetable and rather than just add water so you can make a stock out of almost anything almost but yeah just remember there are two versions white and brown I think I mean that someone will tell me there’s a whole lot more but then there’s Master stocks and there’s
Variations of all sorts of things um but yeah with anything that you’ve got protein involved so beef chicken lamb turkey duck whether you’ve put it at the start or at the end they they will last quite a long time but you need to maintain them and look after them so a
Chicken stocks doesn’t last forever even if you bring it to the boil and bring it to the boil and bring it to the boil and bring it to it’s not not going to last forever um Master Stock’s a little bit different cuz it’s got a lot of salt and
Sugar and all the rest of it but yeah just look after them um and when you get a chance to make one they’re not difficult like it’s bung it in a pot stick some water on it cook it out like but just with your water content versus your vegetable or chicken
Or whatever content it is depending on how much time you’ve got will depend on how much water that you add so generally just enough water to cover so if I’m doing one duck carcass I’ll put it in a let’s say a 3 L Pot maybe a 4 L Pot I
Think my pot’s 4 L I’ll just stick the duck carcass in any of the bits of spices that came with it CU I generally put some Starnes and spring onions and stuff in it I’ll bring it up to the boil always bring your stocks up to the boil
They have to reach the boil um you can’t just have it on a simmer it’s got to come up to the boil first and then turn it down and just let it bubble away so you don’t want a vigorous bubble you just want it just ticking over slowly and then I’ll just leave
That for 2 or 3 hours reduce it by at least a liter to 2 L so I start with four and I’m left with two and by the time I drain the duck out it’s probably one and a half really of liquid but yeah
And then you can add that to if I make a rotto with duck why not oh wow like soup we did a recipe actually we did a we did the recipe for peaking style roasted duck and then I made a stock from the duck carcass and we poached some
Chicken in that in the steam oven and then we used that stock to make a noodle chickeny thing do you like that description a noodle chicken e thing a noodle yeah all those years of cheffing yeah but yeah so I mean you can make a stock out out of anything but yeah
Master stock was kind of topical because I made it the other day but yeah so it’s a different thing Master stock isn’t a term that you use for all stocks Master stock is its own one well thank you for that and I will post in the in the
Podcast so that means you need me to do small work that’s what I love it’s just a I’m just doing a little handball sign here for those of us who know what Aussie Rules Football are hand old it but thank you for that um and happy
Cooking yeah we’ll see you we’ll talk to next time thanks for listening bye thanks for listening to this podcast as we explore home cooking in a modern world we’d love you to subscribe and for more information please go to our website cookingwith steam.com