Sopa de Almejas (Clam Soup)

There is this wonderful Peruvian restaurant in Connecticut that the CC has been visiting for more than a decade. It makes a killer sopa de almejas.

Since the restaurant is a bit of a hike for the CC, he always ends up ordering the soup — rather than the other possibly amazing dishes — and he's never disappointed. It's served with some bread (at best, average) and some amazing homemade aji criollo.

However, it's the soup that really sings and the CC has been trying to reproduce it ever since.

At long last — it only took a decade — he's untangled the various strands and made it for himself, and it's exactly as killer.

There were several hidden problems that needed to be solved. One was that the soup came with this emulsified broth with a very deep taste. Inside it were placed four or five rather large clams. Finely chopped cilantro was sprinkled on the top. The broth had no solids but it had an intense flavor. There was a reasonable amount of oil in the broth like all restaurants. However, this turned out to be a red herring. There were more important things at play.

Some things were really obvious. There was a lot of tomato purée in the broth. There were the deep notes of black pepper. It was clear it was some kind of fish broth. It also had a very deep cilantro flavor that could not be coming from the tiny amount of stuff sprinkled on top.

The other clue was the price point on the menu. It was one of the cheapest items, and the serving was large enough for a very good lunch. Now, clams are rather cheap on the Eastern seaboard but they're not that cheap so that means the ingredients inside the broth had to be cheaper. (The CC considered the possibility that they were using commercial clam juice but the taste of the broth had a subtle fresh flavor so it didn't seem very likely.)

Other clues. The clams were served on the half-shell and were very juicy. They could not have been cooked with the broth, and they were too plump to have been sitting in there for too long.

Two other important clues.

The dish always took a little longer to serve than other dishes (when the CC went with friends) and the surprising one —  the broth was served piping hot. It was served almost at boiling point (close to 90-95°C.) When the broth cooled down, the soup didn't taste as good. Clearly, the temperature mattered greatly.

Peruvian cuisine is the ultimate mashup — besides the indigenous Incan origin, it's had Spanish, Italian, Chinese, West African and particularly Japanese influences.

It was clear that the broth had tons of umami but once again the price-point was critical. They may have been using MSG but it was being done with a light hand.

The critical insight is that this was a cheap restaurant surviving on very low margins. Nothing could be wasted. There were shrimp on the menu and they were clearly buying them whole. The broth was being made with the shrimp heads and the shells. They are the source of the resonant thumping flavor. Also, the broth clearly had onions and garlic and tons of black pepper and cilantro. However, after the broth being made, it was being filtered and solids pressed and tossed out. Then the clams were being shucked, and cooked in the broth, and whole thing brought to the table piping hot. They were also generous with salt.

Why did the temperature matter?

The CC is not completely sure but it seems plausible that the bitter notes of the cilantro and the pepper were dominating at lower temperatures. When hot, you just got the heady hit of the salt and umami from the broth and the tomatoes.

Sopa de Almejas

Note 1: The clams that the CC gets are the standard East Coast clams. The giant ones are easier to find up in Connecticut, Massachusetts & Maine. This doesn't matter as much. They were definitely using local stuff not Manila clams, etc.

Note 2: The salt in this recipe is really crucial. You need to add a teeny bit more than you think completely rational. The CC added salt to the boiling broth until it tasted "correct". It was a lot more than he expected. It will not be the same without.

Note 3: Unless you have shrimp heads and shells in your freezer, the clear substitute would be dried shrimp. You will also need some kombu unless you plan to add MSG. Not going to work otherwise.

Note 4: As ridiculous as this sounds, it's better with crusty bread that has been wrapped for about 6-8 hours in foil so that it goes just slightly limp from the exhalation of the moisture from the starch. The CC is perfectly aware that this is anal retentiveness^† of the highest order.

Note 5: The broth really needs to be at a boil. The CC is not kidding.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

1 dozen clams

2 tbsp oil
1 small onion (diced fine)
6-8 cloves of garlic (chopped)
4-6 tbsp tomato purée
1 piece kombu
1/4 cup dried shrimp
1/4 cup dried anchovies (if you have them)
1/3 cup diced cilantro (stems and all)
3 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper
4 cups water
salt

finely chopped cilantro leaves (to serve)

Recipe

First make the dashi.

Bring the water to the boil with the kombu. Right before the water boils, remove it and discard. If you don't do this, the broth will turn bitter. Toss in the shrimp and anchovies and let it boil for about 7-8 minutes. Skim the nasty froth that comes on top. Strain and keep the liquid. Discard the solids.

Heat up the oil. Fry the onions and the garlic until golden. Add the tomato purée and fry for a bit. Add the dashi, cilantro, salt and black pepper and bring to a rolling boil. Cook for about 6-7 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it steep for 10 minutes or so. Strain the broth pressing down on the solids to extract as much of the broth as necessary. Discard the solids.

(If you have two pots, the dashi can directly be strained into the second step. It will save you tons of time.)

Steam the clams with either the broth or some water. As they open, remove them and shuck off the half-shell. You can also just shuck them and store if you don't want to serve them with the half-shells.

Filter the clam broth with some paper towels. Clams are generally very gritty. Add this clam broth to the other broth.

Bring the broth to a rolling boil. Check for salt. You may need more.

Pour the broth over the clams. Add the cilantro on top. Serve at once with the crusty bread.

---

^† This can't be entirely surprising for a recipe that was a decade in the making.

Court Bouillon

It's French for "short broth" as in broth that is cooked for a short amount of time and it's the kind of thing that separates truly committed cooks from rank amateurs.

The idea is simple. Simmer a bunch of aromatic ingredients for a relatively short amount of time (compared to making real broth) so as to get a light delicate flavorful liquid.

You would see this most often used to poach fish but you can use it for a variety of uses including making a béchamel that will knock your socks off.

The effort required to make it is minimal and the results disproportionately amazing.

The recipe is far from set in stone. You can twist it and turn it in many directions based on what you want to achieve but the basic rules stay the same - a mass of aromatic vegetables and spices are cooked in water and wine for a "brief" bit and then filtered. Fennel seeds work wonders with fish. You can add cloves or garlic if you want a spicier broth. There is considerably leeway here.

The word "brief" deserves an explanation. Classical stock-making takes a few hours and even with the advent of the pressure cooker as we have seen still takes a lot of effort. By comparison, this is brief. Roughly 30 minutes.

In this hectic age of ours, this may seem like an eternity in what is but a prelude to the real recipe but you can have a nice de-stressing glass of wine while the broth makes itself.

An important point for lazy cooks (aren't we all?) — you don't need to peel the carrots or the onions. Just wash them and chop them quickly. You aren't going to be eating them and the skin adds flavor to the product. Win-win as they say.

Ingredients

1 onion (finely chopped)
1 carrot (finely chopped)
1 stalk celery (finely chopped)

1 cup white wine
3 cups water

1 tbsp. black peppercorns
1 tsp. fennel seeds
3 bay leaves

1 sprig rosemary
stems of parsley (if you have them)

salt

Recipe

Dump all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Skim any foam that comes to the surface. Strain through a fine mesh retaining the liquid.

Better Living Through Chemistry (or Why Julia was Deluded!)

It's very rare when you can say that Julia Child was flat-out wrong^†. It's even more wondrous to say that not only was Julia wrong but that Escoffier was wrong^‡ too. It's almost downright iconoclastic to say that not only were they wrong but that they were wrong in that most classical of French techniques — stock making.

And yet they were.

Welcome to the modern world of technology and chemistry!

The first crack in the facade is that you frequently hear them talking about "refreshing the stock". You need to keep adding in spices, etc. to "freshen" the stock. Why would you need to do so? Shouldn't the stock already be fresh? Shouldn't the spices already be there?

The answer as many of you might know is that what we think of as taste is really smell and spices consist of volatile molecules that dissipate in the air. Particularly when they are boiled.

Classical stock making consists of boiling the living daylights out of a standard flavor mixture. The short version is that it consists of vegetables plus meat plus aromatics. First the vegetables are fried, then the meat and aromatics added. Then a ton of water and the whole thing is brought to a simmer. The oil allows the oil-soluble volatile compounds to get transferred to the water and you must skim off the fat that comes to the surface. When the meat and vegetables have given up all their goodness to the water, you have stock.

Classical stock makes the house smell good^§. That's another way of saying that the volatile compounds are dissipating in the air and you will need to find a way to "refresh" them later because they are being lost.

The trick consists of not losing the volatile molecules in the first place. This is not a particularly original idea. It was first suggested by Heston Blumenthal a while ago and given more modern credence by Nathan Myhrvold in his epic Modernist Cuisine.

However, you must own a pressure cooker.

The fundamentals of stock making remain in play. The onions and vegetables must be fried. That's Maillard for you. The meat must be roasted (if making brown stock). That's also Maillard. However, instead of boiling it, you pressure cook for a much shorter time (at a higher temperature) and you filter it after it cools back to room temperature.

Your stock will be amazingly concentrated and you will have done it in half the time.

Given the absurdly cold weather, the CC had sourced some organic beef shin bones and went about making a classical "brown stock" in order to make French Onion Soup. The recipes for both follow below.

Here are a few tricks that you might not have heard of. They are actually quite common among chefs but the CC never sees any of these "dark arts" being published in the literature. (Why would they give their secrets away?)

1. Toss in 2-3 pods of star anise into the broth when you are making it. Star anise contains anethole which is a polyphenol. It's both distinctly sweeter than sugar and also will react with sulfur in the onions to turn into the wonderful aromatics characteristic of the Maillard reaction. This intensifies the "meatiness" of the broth. If used in moderation, you will not smell the characteristic "anise smell" in the broth. (Consider this as the Vietnamese contribution to classical French cooking!)
2. Toss in a handful of dried shiitake mushrooms. Alternatively, if you are feeling flush in cash, toss in some dried porcini mushrooms. The mushrooms amp up the existing umami from the vegetables and the meat by adding their own guanylates to the mix. (On a side note, chefs frequently "amp" up commercial beef broth by just tossing in a handful of the cheap dried shiitake mushrooms, boiling for a bit and filtering. Yes, it is that effective!)
3. When roasting the meat, it's traditionally tossed with flour which will brown a bit. Toss it with condensed milk instead. Once more, this is Maestro Maillard riding to the rescue. The condensed milk just has more of the proteins in a concentrated framework.

And here are some of the tricks to really impress your chef friends:

1. After cooking the stock in the pressure cooker ("no skimming, no hard work"), all the fat will be on the surface. This is the magic of high-heat, no boiling. You can just skim it off with a ladle. Then pass the broth through three layers of folded cheese cloth. Do not press the cloth but it's fine to let it drip dry. The volume will reduce drastically. This is clarification by filtration. Chill immediately in an ice bath. This is important.
2. If you want to clarify it further, chill overnight, scrape the fat off the top, reheat without boiling, and do process [1] again. Your chef friends will be absolutely amazed at your consommé and you will have done it for a tenth of the classical effort which involves egg whites. (Incidentally, the egg whites are just a less efficient version of the same filtration described above AND they cause substantial loss of the volatile flavor molecules which is what we want in the first place!)

---

† To be fair to Julia, she did explore the idea even back then. However, the pressure cooking technology of her time kinda sucked. Modern pressure cookers are much more precise so she wasn't really wrong. At least, for her time. But times change and technology evolves.

‡ Just too early really.

§ There are many practitioners of "modernist cuisine" that think that the kitchen must have no smells whatsoever. They do have an excellent point but this is practically impossible for most of us so we must live with reasonable compromises while pursuing that flighty temptress, perfection.

---

Brown Stock

Ingredients

2 beef shin bones
1 large onion
1 large carrot
2-3 cloves garlic

2-3 pods star-anise
4 dried shiitake mushrooms

rosemary
black pepper
salt

Recipe

First, roast the bones at 450°F for about 40 minutes. They will give off a lot of fat. Discard or use for other purposes. They should be lightly browned.

Fry the onions, garlic and the carrot in the pressure cooker. Add the bones and fry some more. Add all the ingredients, cover to the top with water and let pressure cook for at least two hours. You will need to fiddle with the heat so that there is no hissing at all. (No losses!)

Let the pressure cooker cool down naturally which will take the better part of an hour.

If you do this right, when the broth cools almost all of the fat will be on the surface. Another advantage of using a pressure cooker. Using a ladle you can just skim the fat right off.

On a coolness note, you can hear the bones crack inside the pressure cooker at some point. Not to worry. The goodness is being extracted.

You should chill the broth overnight and skim the fat that will accumulate at the top. You can freeze the broth at this point if you like.



French Onion Soup

Ingredients

16 large onions (yes!)
6 cups beef broth

1 tbsp flour

butter
olive oil

stale bread (read below!)
1/3 cup grated gruyère
1/4 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

At least, for this the CC is happy to report, there's no bettering classical technique so you'll just have to get down to it.

Cut the onions into semi-circles.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large pot. If you follow Julia, it should be all butter but the CC has found that the mixture works better. Add the onions to the pot. Turn the heat onto medium-high and let cook for an hour. Stir every 20 minutes. Towards the end you will probably need to stir every 5 minutes or so.

The onions will turn into a rich dark color. It may take longer depending on the moisture content.

Add a tablespoon of flour, and let it cook for about 5 minutes.

Add the broth and bring to a boil. Let cook for about 25 minutes on medium-low heat.

You will need stale bread that is preferably naturally leavened and let it dry out. Cover the piece with the grated cheese and stick it under the broiler for about 3 minutes. Be very careful. This has a tendency to burn. 30 seconds the wrong way and you will have a burnt mess. Best to keep checking.

Ladle the soup over the bread-cheese combo. Slurp.

Howto: Poach Fish

All poaching is the same idea. Cook the object in the presence of aromatics in a suitable broth.

While fish may be poached in anything from tomato broth to chicken broth, one of the ways to do it well is to add a cup of white wine to the poaching liquid, and slowly bring the liquid to boiling.

The reason is simple.

Alcohol has a far lower boiling point than water. It boils at 78°C as opposed to water's 100°C.

Because fish poaches so quickly, the temperature will not rise above 78°C and you will not overcook the fish.

The same technique works for eggs as well.

Dashi

The making of dashi is the foundation of Japanese cooking.

It is to Japanese cuisine what veal stock is to French cuisine. In fact, it is so fundamental to the very grammar of traditional Japanese cuisine that it can be safely said that there can be no Japanese cuisine in its absence.

However, its importance looms even larger in a multi-cultural universe.

Dashi is a umami rock-star.

Master it, and you can give a little more ooomph to all foods from Italian to Indonesian. (In fact, this is the "secret" to the success of many professional chefs. All they ever did in life was to add a ladle of dashi to their sauces, and suddenly they were "jeniuses" - yes, with the less common "j"-spelling.)

Well, you can be one too. But, first you must learn the basics of Japanese tradition.

The classic dashi begins with konbu -- also spelt kombu because in Japanese, the pronunciation is in-between the "em" and the "en" sounds -- and katsuobushi.

Konbu is a seaweed that is absurdly potent in umami flavor. When you buy it, it will look like it has a patina of whitish dust over it. Do NOT wash it under any circumstances. That patina is the source of the umami.

Katsuobushi is dried skip-jack tuna which is another rich source of umami. Most likely, the supermarket version will be the pre-sliced, paper-thin, pale-brownish-pink stuff but the real stuff is like an elongated rock-hard block of wood. It lasts forever, and has to be shaved fresh on an inverted wood-plane -- katsuobushi kezuriki. (Needless, to say, the CC heaps scorn on the supermarket one but it's not bad in a pinch.)

Both ingredients are dry, and will last forever in your pantry.

Classical Japanese technique calls for making two broths -- ichiban dashi and niban dashi -- quite literally, the first and second extractions.

Ichiban dashi is a clear, golden-hued, light stock with a delicate flavor meant for clear soups.

Niban dashi is a darker-hued, robust-flavored, all-purpose stock to cook with.

The recipe makes a little over 4 cups of each. The CC frequently doubles the recipe if needed. If you only need the more robust version, you can just skip the intermediate steps but make sure you understand all the details below.

There are many many other styles of dashi -- niboshi dashi with dried sardines, dashi made with shiitake mushrooms, entirely vegetarian versions made for Buddhist temple cuisine (shōjin ryōri), etc.

It's a world unto itself.

Ingredients

4 cups water
a 5" piece of konbu
3 handfuls of katsuobushi (two initially, one for later.)

Recipe

Soak the konbu in 4 cups of water at room temperature for 30 minutes. Heat the water until just before it starts to boil. Remove the konbu, and set aside. If you don't remove it before the water boils, the broth will taste bitter which you don't want.

Bring the water to a boil. Turn off the heat. Add about 1/2 cup of water to cool it down, and toss in two handfuls of the katsuobushi. If the water is too hot, it will be cloudy which is aesthetically unpleasant. (Note the similarity to classical French stock-making.)

Strain the liquid with a cheesecloth. Under NO circumstances press down on the solids which would also cause the broth to be cloudy.

The liquid is ichiban dashi.

To make niban dashi, add the solids and the retained konbu to four cups of water. Bring to a boil. As soon as it boils, turn off the heat, add an extra half-cup to cool it down, and add the extra handful of katsuobushi to it -- oigatsuo -- "chaser" katsuo. Steep for 3-4 minutes.

Filter with a cheesecloth but this time wring to extract the maximum flavor from it.

You have niban dashi.

Poached Scallops over Spinach Couscous

This is the ultimate weekday dish. You should be able to manage this even with your "busy schedules" and "heatwaves".

If you can't manage this, the CC suggests you keep all the local takeouts and deliveries on speed dial. Oh, and you are not fit material for this blog.

Heat some tomato broth in a pan. When it comes to a simmer, turn the heat down. Add salt, pepper, herbs of your choice -- the CC added rosemary and/or thyme -- pop in the scallops and poach gently until they are barely set.

In parallel, the CC heated some water. Use the nuker. Drop in a bouillon cube (go on! don't be so uppity.) Pour it over the couscous. Cover. Let the couscous do its thing.

Remove the scallops from the pan using a slotted spoon. Turn the heat for the sauce on high, and reduce.

Plate as below. Not exactly rocket surgery but a perfectly balanced delicious meal.


This is a fairly general idea. You can poach squid, or shrimp, or even a fish fillet (for which you will need a larger amount of broth.)

You could even poach an egg.

You can use whatever herbs you have at hand. Sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano. You can bung in a chilli pepper or two for some heat. Or an anchovy for some umami.

The variations are endless. This is a meta-recipe.

As the CC said, it's the ultimate weekday dish.

Poached Eggs in Tomato Broth

The post that has caused the most controversy on this blog has been the one on poached eggs.

Anyway, poaching is all fine and dandy but if you poach your eggs in some yummy broth, they will taste better. Kinda obvious.

A classic is to poach it in tomato broth. Even if you just take tomato paste from a can, mix it with hot water, you will get great results.

This is definitely a great meal in a pot. When you want a nice meal but you are not willing to spend a lot of time to make it.



The recipe is kinda obvious. Fry some onions, add the broth, salt, lots of black pepper, crack two eggs and let them poach. Some fresh herbs are always welcome (oregano, rosemary, thyme - whatever you have at hand.)

They were served over some stale bread (which you can't see because of the poaching liquid.)

Poached Eggs in Tomato Broth

Tomato Broth

The recipe bears a great deal of resemblance to your basic tomato sauce so you may want to read that first.

You must take your time with frying the tomato purée. Yes, this is Maillard. As Brahms once told a critic, "Any ass can see that!"

Ingredients

1 medium red onion (diced very fine)
4 cloves garlic (crushed)

1 lb tomatoes (passed through a food mill)

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Fry the onion and the garlic at very low heat for at least 10 minutes. Yes, this matters.

Add the tomato purée, salt and pepper and fry for a bit. Let it reduce at a low heat for the better part of 20-25 mins. All the taste comes out of this extreme reduction so deal.

Add the water to dilute it to the required consistency, and let it come to a boil.

This is the point in time you can add "seasonings" (for example, rosemary, etc.) Let it simmer on a low heat for 20 mins.

You need to pass the stuff through a strainer to get the broth. Dilute further (if necessary.)

Howto: Chicken Broth

This is laughably simple to make. All you require is time -- it doesn't even take effort. Far too many people are intimidated by what is actually absurdly elementary.

Please read this post if you haven't done so already.

The CC prefers to keep his chicken stock basic. No fancy flavorings so that he can control for that in whatever he uses it.

Ingredients

1 large onion (chopped coarsely, leave the skin on)
2 carrots
1 stick celery

chicken bones and parts

olive oil

1 tbsp black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
sea salt

Recipe

Chop the onions and carrots coarsely. Leave the skin on. It just doesn't matter.

Fry the onions languidly at a low heat. Add the carrots and celery and fry for at least 6-8 minutes. Add the chicken and fry for a while. Add the peppercorns and bay leaves.

Then, and this is the most important part, add a large quantity of cold water.

Let it heat up slowly. Simmer for at least 4 hours, skimming the foam that comes up periodically. You will have to keep skimming; this is the hardest part.

Strain the broth discarding the bones and solids. Add adequate salt to preserve it. Let the pot sit in your refrigerator overnight. The fat will come to the surface and solidify. Skim one last time, and you have your broth.

This freezes beautifully.

Passatelli

These are very delicate egg and parmesan noodles from the Romagna region served in broth.

Given how few ingredients this has, this is only going to be as good as the ingredients you use. Specifically the broth. Thankfully, the CC always has some frozen in his freezer. (Commercial is flat out not going to work.)

The CC's didn't turn out perfect (dough needed to be firmer) but they were delicious.

Ingredients

7 cups broth
1/2 cup fine breadcrumbs
3/4 cup parmesan
2 eggs
salt and pepper

Recipe

Breadcrumbs


Mix all the ingredients (not the broth), and make a dough of it.

We are going to use the largest setting of a food mill to pass the dough into the broth.

Bring the broth to a boil, and drop the noodles into it. Let it boil for no more than 2 minutes.

Passatelli in brodo

The Role of Illusions

Every once in a while, we are called upon to make dishes with constraints in mind. This is truly the mark of a good chef.

Cooking is like magic. Sometimes you need to create an illusion.

The CC was called upon to make a classic French Onion Soup minus the beef.

"Impossible, you say?"

"Hard work," says the CC.

The CC made a traditional beef broth side by side with a mushroom broth more than a few times till even the most discerning audience could not tell the difference. In fact, he served it with impunity to an audience (who loved it,) and then revealed the truth.

The CC presents a mushroom broth quite specifically made for classic French Onion Soup (recipe to follow.)

Ingredients

1 large red onion (diced)
1 lb crimini mushrooms (quartered)
2 large portabella mushrooms (diced)
2 carrots (diced)
1/2 cup celery (diced)
3 bay leaves
1 sprig rosemary
10-12 peppercorns
salt to taste
olive oil
10-12 cups of water (approximate - just fill the pot.)

Recipe

Saute the onions in olive oil until pale pink/slightly brown. Add the peppercorns, and saute for a bit. Add the carrots and celery and saute for a bit till soft. Add the mushrooms, and saute for a bit. Add the cold water (it's important that it be cold.) and bring to a very low simmer.

Simmer for 70-90 minutes while skimming periodically.

Over a bowl, strain the broth from the vegetables using a sieve lined with several layers of a cheesecloth. Let the vegetables cool for a while. Take the cheesecloth and squeeze the vegetables to extract more of the juice into the bowl until no more comes out. Discard the pulp.

You may freeze this for a long time.

Vegetable Broth

Most people don't seem to realize how easy broths are to make. They take time and effort, but the commercial crap is so fucking awful that the CC wants to cry over the death of the culinary arts.

Normally, the CC's freezer is chock-full of broths, but I didn't have an appropriate broth for tomorrow's meal.

So it was off to the local farmers' market to get fresh veggies in pissing rain.

Everyone has a favorite broth recipe so you should take what's below as "generic", and feel free to muck with it.

The only caveat that I want to add is that mushroom-based broths have a unique character so be sure that's what you want before you head there.

I wanted a light summer broth, and wanted a mild citrusy flavor so I added lemon-grass (but you don't have to.)

Ingredients

1 red onion (chopped into large pieces)
3 carrots (with fronds, chopped coarsely)
1 zucchini (chopped into large rounds)
3 leeks (cut into large rounds)
3 stalks of celery (coarsley chopped)
1 potato (cut into chunks)

1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp black peppercorns
3 bay leaves

Recipe

Fry the onion, and the leeks until they are translucent. Add the celery, and fry for a minute or two. Add the fennel, peppercorns, and bay leaves and fry for a minute.

Now add the rest of the veggies, and fry them for at least 5-7 minutes. (I will explain the science behind this in a later post.)

Add cold water to the brim of the pot (it is crucial that the water be cold!)

Now the hard part, let the mixture come to a slow boil. As it does, the fat will come to the surface.

Skim, baby, skim

Let it simmer (uncovered) on a very slow heat for the better part of two hours. Keep skimming. (Yes, this is painful.)

Take a cheese-cloth, and separate the broth from the crap. (Toss out the crap!)

If you plan to freeze it, add salt to it. Don't worry about the fact that it is concentrated, you can always dilute it later.