Day five - kitchen!

First day in the kitchen: Learn secrets of making a real stock

Finally we made our way to the kitchen. It was our first day there and as every first day it was a bit chaotic. There are a lot of different things going on at the same time. Our huge kitchen on the third floor divided by sections.

We have section for beginners, who just started to learn, we have section for more experiences people who actually serve their food to other students and staff. There is also section for special events (these guys have some privileges).

During our day, we were introduced to the kitchen, where we can find different equipment and utensils.  We were taught how to organise your station. It should be like this:

Unfortunately we did not have time for doing something by ourselves. As a team we blanched veal bones in a huge steam kettle and then started veal stock which was going to simmer for 6-8 hours and to be strained by evening students. Also we made chicken stock from the beginning to the end, then stained it and left to cool down.

As a part of our curriculum for today Chef gave us a lecture about general rules in the kitchen and stocks. The main things in stock is the ratio. For meat or poultry stock to make 1 gallon (3.78 l) you need:
8 pounds of bones
5 to 6 gallons of water
1 pound mirepoix (mix 50% of onion, 25% of carrot and 25% of celery uniformly cut)
1 sachet d'Epices (1 sprig of thyme, 3-4 parsley stems, 1 bay leaf, a few black peppercorn cracked all tied in cheesecloth).

Combine meat and water, bring to simmer SLOWLY skimming impurity as required and continue slowly simmer. For the last hour of cooking add mirepoix and sachet. Cooking time is 3-4 hours for chicken, 6-8 hours for veal, 8-10 hours for beef.

It seems easy, just a question of time. What I learned for myself that you should do it SLOWLY, slowly bring to simmer and during cooking simmer very gently. The second important part is to add vegetables  only at the last hour of cooking. I made chicken stock quite a few times at home and it was never really clear. Now I know why - I wasn't simmering stock gently enough and also I always put my vegetables at the beginning, so they got mashy making stock cloudy.


So now I know how to and should do it properly at home (as soon as I get pot to to this).
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In the morning we had fog. It was possible to see maybe 30-50 meters ahead. It was beautiful when it started to clear. First we saw the top of mountains, then the middle and then it was cleared completely.
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For tomorrow we have second day in the kitchen. We suppose to do our vegetables cut and make broth (stock made from bones, broth from meat - this is the difference). Again so excited to start working.