3 Spices EVERY Chef Should Learn From Pierre Koffman | BBC Maestro

In this lesson, I'm going to show you, to teach you, how to make a very good veal stock, you know. Veal stock is the foundation of French cooking. Without a good stock, there is no French cooking at all, you know. Italians, it's easy because they've got tomato and they do well with it, you know. But in France, we've got different stock. The main one will be the veal stock. Without the veal stock, you cannot make a sauce Bordelaise, a steak Diana, you know, all those fantastic sauces will go and accompany your meat, you know, your Sunday roast, you know. So it's a very, very important piece of the French cooking. Ask your butcher to cut it quite small because the smaller they are, the quicker they will cook. And make sure he gives you only the gelatinous part of the bones. You know, you don't need the one with just pure bones from the rib or something like that because the result won't be as good as that. So I'm going to put the bones in the oven, 180 Celsius, for a certain time. I say a certain time because it depends as your oven is working. Some professional oven will be very fast. House oven will take a bit more. So I'm sure it will be at least for 30, 35, 45 minutes, something like that. The main thing is to check the color of the bones. So when the bones are quite a nice brownish color, that's perfect. Too white, the stock won't be, won't get that beautiful rich color. And if it burns, you know, it's going to be a bad taste, bad flavor to your stock. So vegetables, we got a choice of vegetables, but mainly it's carrots, onion, leeks, celery branch, a bit of garlic. With French, we love garlic. And if you have the chance to have a celeriac, we use a bit of the skin of the celeriac. You keep the celeriac for something else, for remoulade. You don't need a big celeriac for a stock. You always start with the hard vegetables. So carrots is the hardest of the vegetables. You sweat the carrots until they are going to reach a nice golden color. Caramelizing process is very important in French cooking, you know, because if you put everything together, it's called a soup. But if you caramelize, it's a sauce. You know, it's two different things, you know. Too many people think when you put everything in one pot and you got a good result, it doesn't work like that. You know, you've got to follow a process. And there you got a good result. You know, when you cook, you start cooking with your heart. You don't cook because you've got a book in front of you. You know, a book is just a guide. It guides you, that's all. After, the rest is all the love you put in that dish will make you have a fantastic result, you know. Caramelizing in French cooking and making sauce, you know, is very important. You can see the difference. You got one carrot with caramelized, one carrot with raw, completely raw. And that, even if it's the same vegetables, it's two different tastes. So they don't taste the same. By caramelizing, you develop the sugar taste of the carrot, you know. So it will give a very good taste to the stock. So it's very important to caramelize your vegetables. You see, when you reach that color with the carrots, you go with the onions. And it will be exactly the same with the onion. You put your onions. It will take a bit of time to caramelize, of course. Touch of oil, not too much. The carrots carry on caramelizing. The onions are just starting now. And that process, in two minutes, I will add the leeks and the rest of the vegetables and the celery skin and a little bit of celery branches. That's all we need. Now I put the leeks and all the rest will go there. All the other vegetables can go at the same time. You know, they are quite watery vegetables, all those vegetables. So the last minute is better. Okay, now I'm going to remove the bones from the oven. Yes, they are fine. They look good. You know, they achieve a very nice color, a brownish color. That's why you want to finish things like that. So when the bones are like that, you put them on a pot and you put your vegetables with it, too. So now you cover with cold water. So be generous with the water. Go to the top because as it's going to cook for quite a long time, you know, it will be a lot of evaporation. And always keep an eye on it. You know, you don't want to burn it. So always keep that much water in it. What you got to do now is quite important, is to skim it. As it's going to boil, a lot of skim will come to the top. You need to remove the skim. That's the way you got a clear stock, a nice beautiful stock. There is three stages of reducing. You got reducing for a veal stock, will be quite still slightly liquid. Next stage, if you need a bit more, it will be a bit more syrupy. And we call it a demi-glace. And the third stage will be to reduce even more until it's quite very syrupy, very gelatinous. And when it's cold, it will be as solid as a top, you know. So now the stock is passed, we are going to reduce it. You put it on a fire there and you let it boil. You gently boil again, not badly boil because you'll have again the same problem than before, but gently boil until it reduces. So now we come to the end of veal stock, you know. The stock is ready now. You got a nice color. It's concentrated enough to make a beautiful Bordelaise sauce or any sauce you want to produce at home. It smells beautiful. I'm going to show you how to make a good chicken stock. Chicken stock is quite easy because it's mainly chicken bones, chicken wings, anything you can find from your local butcher. And it goes into cold water or in water in fact. Bring to the boil and add the vegetables and that's it. First I put some water in a pot. Add the chicken bones. There we got the wings. So the chicken, the bones are in a pot with the water, covered in water. And we're going to bring it to the boil. I'm going to prepare the vegetables. Vegetables don't need a special treatment. So we just cut it roughly, just like that. They don't need to be cooked in advance. It's just when the stock is well skimmed, you add it and let it cook for an hour maximum. A little trick I got is when you use cloves, you know, if you put it just like that, when you skim it, it comes out of the stock and you lost it. You lost the flavor of the clove. So you always put the clove inside an onion like that. And you don't put too many, you know, because they are quite strong. When I was at school, they would tell us only one clove for 10 liters of water. I put two because I like the smell, but that's why you don't go over the top. It will be far, far too strong. And that's it. In fact, you know, all the vegetables are ready. So we got celery branch, leeks, carrots, onions, two onions is okay. It's okay. Parsley, bay leaf, and thyme. And I love garlic. As a Frenchman, we love garlic. So I always put some garlic in it. That's it. That's all. Now I'm skimming the stock. You know, there is a lot of I would say rubbish coming up on top, you know, piece of fat and maybe a touch of blood who came to the top. So we remove all that because we want to have a clear stock. Clear chicken stock is very important to be very clear, transparent clear. And if you don't skim it, you know, you go back into the stock and you got a cloudy stock. So you are not very happy with the result. Next job is to put the vegetable in the stock. So we got the garlic coming, onion, everything goes at the same time, you know. They don't need to be roasted. They just go the way they are. The herbs go there. And of course, what is very, very important is to carry on skimming the stock just to get a clear stock. Now I'm going to put a touch of seasoning. We never put too much seasoning on the chicken stock when you start because you don't know really what you want to do with it. And if you reduce too much, if you put too much salt at the beginning, it will be a disaster. So we just put a little bit of salt. Nothing. And a little bit of black pepper. I love black pepper. It's my favorite seasoning. So I put a touch of black pepper too. And that's it. Now we let it cook for roughly an hour. Up to an hour will be plenty enough. It doesn't need to go over an hour. Let it cook. Skim it time to time. And that's it. It's done. Now the chicken stock is ready. So we'll pass it. You can see it's quite clear. It's transparent. That's what you want to finish with, with a transparent stock. You make a more beautiful sauce or a better soup, you know. Okay, that's it. That's it. Job done, you know. The stock is ready. And now chicken stock is very easy to make. As you can see, you know, it's not rocket science. You know, you put the bone vegetable, you cook it, it's done. The only interesting part, what you got to achieve at the end is to have a clear stock. Because you can use it for making a cream sauce, for example. And you need a clean stock. What you can do at home too is when you roast your own chicken, you keep the carcasses and you can make a stock. It won't be as white as this one, but it will be very good. It will make a beautiful jus for the next chicken maybe. So there is quite a lot of use for chicken stock soup mainly. And if you want to make a cream sauce, I don't know, you got a lot of a lot of recipe, you can use chicken stock. It's very important and so easy to make, you know. It's stupid proof. Next up, we are going to make a fish stock. Very easy thing to do. Maybe the easiest of the three we are going to do today. Main ingredient, fish bone, white fish bone. Best one will be turbo, dover sole, those kind of fish. Vegetables, just leeks, onions, a stick or two of celery, parsley, thyme, bay leaf. That's all. We start by putting some butter on the pan. The thing is to, I'm going to sweat the vegetables a little bit to improve the taste of the vegetables. So again, slice but not too thick. It doesn't need to be thick because fish stock will cook in about 20 minutes, 25 minutes. It's done, it's not a lot to cook there. Leek the same, cut very fine or relatively fine. You can put all the veg at the same time there. It's not one after the other. Yeah, you sweat them gently until the veg are soft. No color. You got to keep the veg white, no color at all, no coloration at all, just soft to improve the flavor of all those veggies. Yeah, there is two types of fish stock. One is white, which is by far the most popular stock, but you can make it with red wine for certain fish. Like if you want to cook red mallet, if you want to cook some strong fish like eels from different fish, only a few recipes. So, but I suppose 90 times out of 100 is a white fish stock. When the veg are sweat, we add the bones and you stir. Again, then you sweat the bones and the same thing, no color, just sweat for a few minutes to improve the flavor of the stock. Stock, one liter of stock, if you want, you should start with a liter. Reduce it to 10 centiliters, so reduce by 90%. In fact, you add some whipping cream until 70% and you reduce it until after to 40%. So that's a stupid proof recipe. That's something we learn when you are at cookery school in France. Now I'm going to put some white wine. Normally we use a dry white wine, but for some recipe, again, it can change, but that is after when you are more experienced with stocks. A dry white wine is perfect. White wine, you always let it cook a little bit to evaporate the alcohol. That's it. Once it's done, you add some, just cover it just over the top. That's perfect like that. And you let it, you bring it to the boil because we need a lot of skimming. Fish bones bring a lot, a lot of little part you don't want to see in the sauce after. So bring it to the boil, skim it, and that's it. Cooking time, 20 minutes, 25 minutes is perfect. So after 25 minutes, the stock is ready to pass. Your cooking time is gone. It's perfect. It's enough. There's no point to cook it longer than that because you are not going to have to get it better. By a short time of cooking fish stock, you got all the beautiful taste of the fish. The longer you cook it, the more the taste disappears. That's it. The fish stock is done. Very easy to do. Ready to use. And bon appetit.