Stew-ing success
I spent 12 hours working on my secret project today, and a lot of my recent posts have been pretty heavy. Today's post will be low key.
Low key, but not unimportant. This weekend, I made my first stew.*
Stew was one of those things I didn't like growing up. But unlike foods like gravy and sauerkraut, I had a fairly good idea why. The stews I was fed had as a child had carrots and celery in them. Now, I love carrots and celery, but I love them in their raw crunchy goodness. A raw carrot tastes great. A cooked carrot, with half the flavour boiled out of it, tastes terrible. And the texture is bad, too.
Amusing tangential story: my mother used to make stew, with carrots and celery and those things I didn't like. One evening, she made the stew "without" these things. "How is it?" she asked me. I still didn't like the taste of the broth, but I liked not having to deal with the texture of soggy carrots and celery. "It tastes better," I said. I was trying to encourage this stew I found favourable, and I didn't know the difference between "taste" and "texture" at the time anyway. "Ha!" she shouted at me. "That stew was cooked with celery and carrots, and I just picked them out! You can't tell the difference!" she accused. And so she made the stew I liked less, forevermore. This is one of many events which taught me it's better to be honest than to try and spare someone's feelings. Being nice backfires.
Anyway, this weekend I made my own bloody stew, and there weren't any celery or carrots.
Here's what there was: I started with the leftover turkey bones from my Thanksgiving meal, and threw them into a full pot of water. I added an entire red onion (quartered), some peppercorns, a couple of bay leaves, and a touch of fennel seed. This mixture I simmered for 12 hours. I was leaving this mixture overnight, so I took special care to ensure I wouldn't just boil off all the water while I slept. That would be bad.
In the morning, I took the pot off heat and put it in the fridge. This was less a cooking step, and more the practical result of me having to go to work.
When I returned, I brought the pot back to a boil. Once the broth was boiling, I fished all the turkey bones out. I then added more red onion, some green onion, both red and Yukon gold potatoes, and about 4 cloves of garlic. About 30 minutes before I expected the stew to be done, I added lentils and reduced the stew to a simmer again. At T minus 10 minutes, I added macaroni. Stew is about using whatever you have in the house, correct?
The stew came out delicious, and I think there are two reasons for that. One, I did add a lot of stuff. Stew should not be watery, stew should be chunky. If you don't have to chew the stew when you eat, something's wrong. (Maybe you got tricked into eating soup instead.) Two, I boiled down the broth a lot. When I had a pot full of turkey bones, the broth tasted gross. When I removed the bones, the broth still tasted gross. It tasted dilute, like not enough turkey flavour spread over too much water. That problem has a rather obvious solution. Once I boiled the broth to under half its original volume, everything tasted great.
Yum.
* I'm half-expecting Tim Foster to correct me, to say I made stew in 2003 or something. I remember making plenty of soup but never a stew. That was more his thing.
Also, my mother is a fantastic cook. But I was a picky eater as a child.
Low key, but not unimportant. This weekend, I made my first stew.*
Stew was one of those things I didn't like growing up. But unlike foods like gravy and sauerkraut, I had a fairly good idea why. The stews I was fed had as a child had carrots and celery in them. Now, I love carrots and celery, but I love them in their raw crunchy goodness. A raw carrot tastes great. A cooked carrot, with half the flavour boiled out of it, tastes terrible. And the texture is bad, too.
Amusing tangential story: my mother used to make stew, with carrots and celery and those things I didn't like. One evening, she made the stew "without" these things. "How is it?" she asked me. I still didn't like the taste of the broth, but I liked not having to deal with the texture of soggy carrots and celery. "It tastes better," I said. I was trying to encourage this stew I found favourable, and I didn't know the difference between "taste" and "texture" at the time anyway. "Ha!" she shouted at me. "That stew was cooked with celery and carrots, and I just picked them out! You can't tell the difference!" she accused. And so she made the stew I liked less, forevermore. This is one of many events which taught me it's better to be honest than to try and spare someone's feelings. Being nice backfires.
Anyway, this weekend I made my own bloody stew, and there weren't any celery or carrots.
Here's what there was: I started with the leftover turkey bones from my Thanksgiving meal, and threw them into a full pot of water. I added an entire red onion (quartered), some peppercorns, a couple of bay leaves, and a touch of fennel seed. This mixture I simmered for 12 hours. I was leaving this mixture overnight, so I took special care to ensure I wouldn't just boil off all the water while I slept. That would be bad.
In the morning, I took the pot off heat and put it in the fridge. This was less a cooking step, and more the practical result of me having to go to work.
When I returned, I brought the pot back to a boil. Once the broth was boiling, I fished all the turkey bones out. I then added more red onion, some green onion, both red and Yukon gold potatoes, and about 4 cloves of garlic. About 30 minutes before I expected the stew to be done, I added lentils and reduced the stew to a simmer again. At T minus 10 minutes, I added macaroni. Stew is about using whatever you have in the house, correct?
The stew came out delicious, and I think there are two reasons for that. One, I did add a lot of stuff. Stew should not be watery, stew should be chunky. If you don't have to chew the stew when you eat, something's wrong. (Maybe you got tricked into eating soup instead.) Two, I boiled down the broth a lot. When I had a pot full of turkey bones, the broth tasted gross. When I removed the bones, the broth still tasted gross. It tasted dilute, like not enough turkey flavour spread over too much water. That problem has a rather obvious solution. Once I boiled the broth to under half its original volume, everything tasted great.
Yum.
* I'm half-expecting Tim Foster to correct me, to say I made stew in 2003 or something. I remember making plenty of soup but never a stew. That was more his thing.
Also, my mother is a fantastic cook. But I was a picky eater as a child.