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Jun. 20th, 2005 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI've done something to my back. It is not a happy camper. If I move wrong (and there are a lot of wrong moves, it seems), I know about it. I wish I knew what it was that I did, but I haven't the foggiest. Oh, well. I expect it'll go away sooner or later. Sooner gets my vote.
Over the weekend, my cousin and I talked about chicken pot pie. I've written instructions for slippery noodle chicken pot pie, but I don't know that she's read them. Anyway, she allowed as how her chicken pot pie wasn't the way she thought it should taste, not like grandma's tasted back when we were all a lot younger. A few questions on procedure later, I determined that she was making chicken pot pie with a few chicken breasts and a bullion thingie or two for stock flavor. This is a sub-optimal method of producing chicken stock and I said that it would taste too watery and too salty at the same time... which was apparently what was wrong with the stuff.
Now, it took me an embarrassingly long while to figure out why pork and sauerkraut didn't taste right if I used a pretty boneless pork loin piece. I like pretty boneless pork loin. It doesn't have any grey parts or any icky bits and it's a lot lower fat, to boot. How could delightful boneless pork loin make shitty pork-and-sauerkraut? I didn't get it for the longest time, and it was the same problem as my cousin is having with her chicken pot pie.
See, there is a lot of flavor in bones. For some recipes, you need bones. They are not optional. You need pork bones to make your pork and sauerkraut taste right. You need chicken bones to make suitable chicken stock for pot pie noodles. You need a big ham bone for split pea soup or ham-n-bean soup. The stuff in the jars DOES NOT taste like bones. It can help existing stock flavor, but it cannot create stock flavor from ground zero. To do that, you need bones.
Potpie noodles derive the bulk of their flavor from the stock they are cooked in. It is important to have good stock or your noodles aren't very yummy. Pennsylvania Dutch slippery noodle chicken potpie is not a dish where you can shortcut the stock because it will show. (I am not against shortcuts. I make a delightful potato and leek soup with canned chicken stock because I can't tell the difference in the finished product. Shortcuts are good if they don't reduce the quality of the food below my threshold for edible.)
Here's how to make robust, chicken-y stock suitable for chicken pot pie noodles or scratch chicken noodle soup or whatever:
Take one chicken, cut into pieces, WITH SKIN. Put all the normal chicken pieces (no organ meats, please) in a large pot, one with a lid. Cover the chicken parts with water. To the pot, add one bay leaf, half a chopped up white onion, and two stalks of celery, chopped. A carrot or two wouldn't hurt, either. Turn the stove burner to boil. Boil the chicken stuff for an hour and a half, maybe two hours, checking on it occasionally to see if it needs more water to keep the chicken covered. By the time it is done, the chicken parts should be falling all apart and the water should be somewhat cloudy. It should smell like chicken soup, kinda. At this point, you can remove the chicken bits and proceed with your stock. (I am aware of the classic French thing about simmering stock ingredients to produce clear consumme stock. However, I don't see the point of working for perfectly crystal clear stock when I'm going to dump red potatoes and starchy noodles into it directly. If you're doing potpie noodles, a nice medium boil will do ya because stock clarity isn't important and the delicate notes you might preserve in the flavor would get clobbered by the starch anyway.)
What if you don't like dark meat chicken? Do you still have to buy a whole cut-up chicken what has icky dark meat parts? Yes. The reason the whole chicken is important is because the back is mostly bones and because the legs and thighs have the thick, long bones where most of the flavor is. That's just the way of things. I don't make the rules for this, but I have done the legwork on chicken stock and I've found that you have to have the dark meat parts or the damn stuff doesn't taste properly rich, complex, and chicken-y. Them's the breaks. For good chicken stock, you need all the parts of the chicken. On the plus side, there is no rule that you have to EAT the dark meat. Why not make a cat (or dog) happy? That's what I do...
Over the weekend, my cousin and I talked about chicken pot pie. I've written instructions for slippery noodle chicken pot pie, but I don't know that she's read them. Anyway, she allowed as how her chicken pot pie wasn't the way she thought it should taste, not like grandma's tasted back when we were all a lot younger. A few questions on procedure later, I determined that she was making chicken pot pie with a few chicken breasts and a bullion thingie or two for stock flavor. This is a sub-optimal method of producing chicken stock and I said that it would taste too watery and too salty at the same time... which was apparently what was wrong with the stuff.
Now, it took me an embarrassingly long while to figure out why pork and sauerkraut didn't taste right if I used a pretty boneless pork loin piece. I like pretty boneless pork loin. It doesn't have any grey parts or any icky bits and it's a lot lower fat, to boot. How could delightful boneless pork loin make shitty pork-and-sauerkraut? I didn't get it for the longest time, and it was the same problem as my cousin is having with her chicken pot pie.
See, there is a lot of flavor in bones. For some recipes, you need bones. They are not optional. You need pork bones to make your pork and sauerkraut taste right. You need chicken bones to make suitable chicken stock for pot pie noodles. You need a big ham bone for split pea soup or ham-n-bean soup. The stuff in the jars DOES NOT taste like bones. It can help existing stock flavor, but it cannot create stock flavor from ground zero. To do that, you need bones.
Potpie noodles derive the bulk of their flavor from the stock they are cooked in. It is important to have good stock or your noodles aren't very yummy. Pennsylvania Dutch slippery noodle chicken potpie is not a dish where you can shortcut the stock because it will show. (I am not against shortcuts. I make a delightful potato and leek soup with canned chicken stock because I can't tell the difference in the finished product. Shortcuts are good if they don't reduce the quality of the food below my threshold for edible.)
Here's how to make robust, chicken-y stock suitable for chicken pot pie noodles or scratch chicken noodle soup or whatever:
Take one chicken, cut into pieces, WITH SKIN. Put all the normal chicken pieces (no organ meats, please) in a large pot, one with a lid. Cover the chicken parts with water. To the pot, add one bay leaf, half a chopped up white onion, and two stalks of celery, chopped. A carrot or two wouldn't hurt, either. Turn the stove burner to boil. Boil the chicken stuff for an hour and a half, maybe two hours, checking on it occasionally to see if it needs more water to keep the chicken covered. By the time it is done, the chicken parts should be falling all apart and the water should be somewhat cloudy. It should smell like chicken soup, kinda. At this point, you can remove the chicken bits and proceed with your stock. (I am aware of the classic French thing about simmering stock ingredients to produce clear consumme stock. However, I don't see the point of working for perfectly crystal clear stock when I'm going to dump red potatoes and starchy noodles into it directly. If you're doing potpie noodles, a nice medium boil will do ya because stock clarity isn't important and the delicate notes you might preserve in the flavor would get clobbered by the starch anyway.)
What if you don't like dark meat chicken? Do you still have to buy a whole cut-up chicken what has icky dark meat parts? Yes. The reason the whole chicken is important is because the back is mostly bones and because the legs and thighs have the thick, long bones where most of the flavor is. That's just the way of things. I don't make the rules for this, but I have done the legwork on chicken stock and I've found that you have to have the dark meat parts or the damn stuff doesn't taste properly rich, complex, and chicken-y. Them's the breaks. For good chicken stock, you need all the parts of the chicken. On the plus side, there is no rule that you have to EAT the dark meat. Why not make a cat (or dog) happy? That's what I do...
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Pot pie stock
Date: 2005-06-21 02:48 pm (UTC)On a related note, boneless pork loin will make acceptable pork & sauerkraut if you toss in a few country style (with bone) pork spare ribs. We sometimes have difficulty finding bone-in pork roasts for pork and sauerkraut, so this was an experiment resulting from necessity.
Back to the pot pie: one of the things that you can do with the pot pie stock is to make a fairly decent batch of it with a chicken (you can also simply buy several thighs piecemeal instead of monkeying with the whole chicken) and reduce it on a simmer. Freeze the reduced amount and add water back to it when you go to make the noodles. This can greatly speed up the noodle cooking process. Pot pie noodles will never be a convenience food, but this helps the cooking process along the road for cold, crappy days when the siren calls of comfort foods and starch become irresistable. Alternatively, you can strap yourself to the stove and stuff balls of egg noodle dough in your ears.
A final thought on the egg noodle process, and one which I have not experimented with, is that it should theoretically be possible to prepare egg noodles in advance. If the noodles, once made, are put into an oven on low heat to dry for a bit, you can probaby dust them with some flour and put them between sheets of wax paper. Roll them up, stuff 'em into a freezer bag, and put them next to your prepared stock. In theory, it should allow quick rejuvenation of the noodles in the stock. You could probably take frozen stock and frozen noodles and get to pot pie noodles in about 25 minutes.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 11:59 pm (UTC)You must have dark meat. It's higher in fat content, and adds to the flavor. White meat is fine for eating, but to do the background work you need dark.
That all being said, the best meal served by Kutztown State College was when they let the Dutchy Lunch Ladies cook their once a year Pot Pie. My grandmother, who made passable pot pie, said that Mueller's egg noodles did just fine, she didn't need to go through the making of the homemade, although I remember her doing that once. Once.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-22 01:51 am (UTC)Additionally, I am indoctrinating the younger generation about egg noodles so that we can continue this lunacy unto the fourth (at least) generation.