your and your family's taste preferences. Two or three cloves of garlic are another option. Don’t

be afraid of adding too much garlic. During cooking their strong garlicky flavor mutes

completely to a mild, sweet flavor note.

Just remember that a stock pot is not a waste can. If a vegetable is not good enough for

any other use because it is old and tired, it won't add much to your stock either. Anything with

signs of spoilage is out, too, unless you can remove the spoiled portion easily. If you are going to

purchase vegetables specifically for a stock, the more mature they are, the more flavor they have.

Their toughness doesn't matter—all you want is the flavor.

If you skin poultry before cooking, add the skin to your stock supplies. Poultry skins have

plenty of flavor, nearly as much as the bones. A lot of fat, too, but you can easily remove that

after you’ve chilled the stock. A chicken stock made with plenty of chicken skins is as full-

flavored as a stock made with chicken bones.

For extra-flavorful stocks, sauté the vegetables in a little fat (butter, oil or a combination)

before adding them to the pot. Meat bones add much more flavor to a stock if you put them in a

hot oven and brown them first. The browning action creates a great number of new organic

chemicals, some of which are flavor enhancers in tiny amounts (see the chapter on Flavorings for

more information on this). Browning vegetables and bones does take extra time and effort, and

you can produce a very good stock without this added step. Remember, too, that when you

brown vegetables and bones, your stock turns into a darker shade—the more browning, the

darker the stock. In the light, golden Jewish chicken soup nothing is browned.

TASTINGS What's that scum?

Many cooks suggest to remove the scum that forms on the surface of a stock

during simmering. Scum only forms when you have meat and bones in the liquid.

It is a mixture of coagulated protein and fat—unappetizing but not harmful. If

there is a lot, it is a good idea to skim the scum off with a shallow spoon because

it eventually clouds a clear stock. If you see only a little scum, you can safely

forget it.

Take stock of your stock

It is a basic principle of chemistry that chemical components of a solid immersed in a

liquid aim to equalize their compositions—the flavors of a liquid move into the solid and vice

versa. Heat hastens that process. That's why the rich flavors of the meat and vegetables transfer

to the liquid when you simmer them together for any length of time. But, as the French proverb

says, "to make a good soup the pot only must smile". Boiling gives you a cloudy stock. Very

gentle simmer, or as some chefs call it, subsimmer, is the key—just enough heat to see a few

slow bubbles rise up to the surface.

How long a stock needs to simmer depends on what is in it. You want to extract the

maximum flavor from the basic material. If it is a vegetable stock, 1½ to 2 hours should reduce

the vegetables to a flavorless pulp, with their flavors transferred to the liquid. Chicken bones take

longer, 3½ to 4 hours. Meat bones are the thickest and most dense. Allow 5 to 6 hours of

subsimmering to get all the flavor into the liquid.

The solids in the finished stock has little flavor left. Some cooks, who refuse to throw

anything out, try to reuse it anyway, particularly any chicken meat left on the bones. They use

this as filler in salads, soups and casseroles, but don't expect it to add to the flavor of the dish,

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