"broth" news and stories

Photo: Elana's Pantryl, Flickr.

Ruining the flavor of an entire dish with overpowering canned stocks is a preventable tragedy. Instead, save money (and the dish!) by making your own using little more than a leftover chicken carcass.

Flickr user Elana's Pantry created this standard Gluten-Free Roasted Chicken Stock recipe by roasting a few vegetables (onion, garlic and carrot) then adding them to a pot of water with the carcass and herbs (parsley, bay leaves, thyme and celery leaves) and simmering the concoction for a good hour. She then strained them into these mason jars for attractive storage. Feel free to adjust the herbs to taste when making your own, which will keep well in the refrigerator for extra flavorful sauces, soups and more. They're even flavorful enough to be sipped on their own.

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• The plusses and minuses of eating local in Seattle.
• Hard-cooked eggs are good for more than just coloring.
• What's the difference between stock and broth?
• Renowned mixologist Daniel Shoemaker did the hippy hippy shake for Seattle last week.
• That handy sustainable-fish sushi guide is now available at the Seattle Aquarium.
• The FDA has ordered an expanded recall of Uncle Chen and Lian How products.
• Downtown Seattle's ART Lounge features the famous sliders the now-defunct Cascadia used to serve.
• Recipes for a Tex-Mex dinner: Smoky Beef Tacos, Avocado-Red Onion Relish, Corn and Tomato Salsa, Cilantro-Lime Crema, Cumin Rice and Beans, and Spicy Pineapple Salad.
• A super-handy map for Yakima, Washington's wine region.
• Recipes: Gluten-Free Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies, Reduced-Fat Cheddar Cheese Biscuts, Pork Tenderloin - Three Ways,Three Dinner Salads and Veal Marsala and Sicilian Penne Pasta
• A New Seastar has opened next to the Pan Pacific Hotel and boasts foods like "vibrant ceviches" and servers who go the extra mile, while Malabar South Indian Flavours breaks tradition with beef, chicken, lamb and fish dosas and other tasty dishes.

Before I started making stocks and soups, I falsely assumed that tasty broths were just naturally clear. Then I got my mom to show me how to make her post-Thanksgiving turkey broth. The taste was there, but so was the fat, and that less tasty looking gelatinous goo that came from chilling it in the fridge.

But what about consomme? Michael Ruhlman's latest post details how to turn that homemade stock into a delightfully clear consomme. I plan to test this once Thanksgiving hits, if I can pull myself out of turkey hangover and find the drive.

If you have experience with the art of consomme, is this how you do it? What are your techniques?

We posted about Pho Fever around this time last year, and appears that since then the pho site has added a forum where fans can discuss that ambrosial mixture of beef, broth, noodles and herbs. The forum isn't exactly booming, but there are about 50 users, and a healthy banter about pho recipes. With any luck, more people will check it out and share their thoughts. The site also has a sparsely updated pho blog, but for my pho blogging needs, I think I'll stick with the slightly more current Pho King.

Since the time I read that the growth hormones given to  cows seeped into their milk and meat, I have been a little more particular about the food I put in my shopping basket. When I later learned that children are reportedly entering puberty earlier and earlier, due in part to their diets, I made a solemn vow to buy as much organic food as possible. This is a somewhat selfish act on my part, I have an overbearing, precocious 8 year-old daughter and the longer I can stave off her pubescent years, the safer my sanity .

That said, it is quite expensive to buy organic. Our weekly food tab for a family of five is astronomical, due in no small part to all the products without additives. So in an effort to eat healthily and impart a good work ethic on my kids, we are purchasing a flock of chicks from a nearby ranch family. We will feed them, clean their cages, watch them live a happy eight or ten weeks in the mountain air and then we will chop off their heads, pluck their feathers and make them into soup and cordon blu. I am looking forward to seeing the little peepers, feeding them and eating fresh chicken dinners, but I am somewhat hesitant about that middle death-by-beheading part. My mother and my daughter, Cassidy, had a practice outing several weeks ago where they caught up a rooster and a couple of old hens. The owner did the chopping deed and my mother and daughter plucked the beasts. The next day we enjoyed fabulous chicken soup and dumplings, made all the better by my daughter's blow by blow account of the previous day's efforts.

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