How to Cook Broth: The Complete Guide

Solid, serious cookbooks very often reveal broth recipes. It’s easy to guess the reasons: broths are the basis of cooking, without which warming soups, aromatic sauces, creamy risottos, transparent jellies, and many other dishes that make up a significant part of the treasury of world cuisine are impossible.

A modern city dweller is in a permanent state of time trouble, and there is a great temptation not to bother with cooking broth, but to dilute a bouillon cube in boiling water, but this compromise is better left to those who do not particularly care about the contents of their own plate. It’s not even that it’s “chemistry” – just try it, and you will unmistakably distinguish a cube broth from a broth cooked according to all the rules of culinary science. What does it mean?

This means that everyone who wants to learn how to cook must definitely master this simple science – cooking the perfect broth.

Varieties of broths

A broth is a decoction of meat, fish or vegetables, when properly prepared, it has a pleasant and rich taste (as well as medicinal properties, although this is not about that now). The broth can be a dish in itself, but most often it is used as a foundation, an intermediate link in the preparation of other, more complex dishes.

We have already listed the main ones in the introduction to this article, and it should also be noted that broth is an excellent base for cooking: meat or fish cooked in broth (meat or fish, respectively) retain a rich taste and aroma, while rice and others the cereals are very tasty.

As a rule, broths are cooked from bones, sometimes with some meat, and with the addition of vegetables and aromatic herbs, but there are many recipes for vegetarian broths. Historically, different types of broths have appeared in different parts of the world, so it is rather difficult to separate them into a single classification. Here are the main types of broths:

Chicken bouillon – the basis of the basics. Chicken broth is so versatile that it is perfect for most soups, sauces and risottos, and the neutral flavor of chicken broth makes it easy to use in fish and seafood dishes.

Meat broth – from beef, pork or other types of meat. This broth is an excellent base for hearty soups and sauces for meat dishes.

Fish broth – is cooked from the bones, as well as the heads and fins of fish, used for making fish soup and fish soups, as well as for boiling fish, which makes its taste more intense.

Vegetable broth – cooked from vegetables and herbs without adding meat. This broth turns out to be quite aromatic and can be used as a full substitute for chicken or meat broth when preparing lean and vegetarian dishes.

Mushroom soup – made from mushrooms, dried or fresh, and used to make mushroom soups, risottos and so on.

Dasha broth – a light broth based on kombu seaweed and shavings of dried bonito tuna, a base for miso soup and other Japanese soups.

Low Soi – reusable Chinese soybean brine, in which the meat is cooked, after which it is not poured out, but left until the next time. Gradually, this broth is enriched with the flavor of the products cooked in it and, if handled correctly, can be stored practically forever. It is said that some Chinese chefs cook in broths that are hundreds of years old.

In addition, you can distinguish seafood broth (it is quite common where seafood is full and they cost a penny), broth from shrimp shells and other crustaceans (an excellent basis for chowder, curry and other dishes where shrimps are involved) and others, quite exotic varieties of broth. All of them have one thing in common – the method of preparation, so let’s understand the theory of making broth.

Broth ingredients

A broth, like any dish in general, begins with the selection of ingredients. I have already mentioned many of them above, but I forgot about the most important one. Let’s start with him.

Water

Water is something without which no broth is unthinkable, so use high-quality, tasty water without impurities for its preparation. In the process of boiling the broth, the water will boil away, but if you add water to the broth instead of the boiled one, this will negatively affect its taste. For this reason, water is always taken a little more than the amount of broth that needs to be obtained. Well, if something went wrong and you have no other choice, add not cold water, but boiling water so that the cooking process does not stop.

Basis

The base of the broth is usually bones, meat or fish. Bones are used because they are very cheap, but they provide a wonderful brew, so ideally the bones should be chopped up to make the broth richer. Often broth is cooked not only from bones, but also from meat – this is justified if you are preparing a soup, which will be a part of this meat, but for all other cases this is not the best idea: the meat will inevitably “give” part of its taste to the broth (that is why it is better to cook meat not in water, but in broth).

If the broth is prepared from fish, in addition to bones, fins and heads are usually used: in this case, the gills must be removed. In addition, I have seen recommendations to remove the eyes so that the broth does not taste bitter, but I almost never do this, because in practice the difference in the taste of the finished broth is hardly noticeable. If you are preparing a vegetable broth, the following ingredient acts as a base.

Vegetables and roots

Even if you cook a broth from meat, roots and vegetables cannot be neglected – this is the most important component of the broth, which gives its richness and depth to its taste. Traditional candidates for broth are onions, leeks, garlic, carrots, stalked celery, and celery and parsley roots. Other vegetables that can be sent to the broth, especially if you only cook it with vegetables, are tomato, bell peppers, fennel, parsnip root, and mushrooms that don’t seem to be vegetables. When cooking Asian broths, in addition to those listed, ginger or galangal roots can be used.

Garni bouquet

If this name is unfamiliar to you, do not rush to be intimidated: the French term “garni bouquet” refers to a bouquet of fragrant herbs that are added when boiling broth or stewing meat to flavor broth or sauce and, more broadly, herbs and spices in general that are added to broth. The main herbs that are used when cooking broth are parsley, thyme, bay leaves, rosemary, leeks and others, among the main spices are black and allspice and cloves. Before adding to the broth, it is convenient to tie the herbs into a small bouquet, which is easy to get out of the finished broth, and put the spices in a gauze bag for the same purpose. I wrote more about the garni bouquet in one of my previous articles.

Preparation of broth

In this section, I decided to combine all my knowledge about the various nuances of making broth, but, of course, it does not claim to be encyclopedic accuracy. Corrections and additions in the comments are more than welcome.

About the benefits of stocks

The classical culinary school teaches that the amount of food thrown away should go to zero, and broth in this sense is the ideal way to dispose of leftovers that would otherwise go to the trash can. If you are going to cook chicken wings – cut off the third joint, baked the whole chicken – save the bones, made pancakes with leeks – do not throw away the green part, made a sauce from herbs – do not rush to get rid of the stems. All of this, not to mention the onion and carrot peels, will form the basis for a great broth, and if you make it a rule to freeze the leftovers and boil the broth regularly as there are enough of them, your life will be easy and cloudless.

Slicing ingredients

In order for the ingredients to give the broth their taste and aroma as quickly as possible, they must be cut. For these purposes, it is better to chop or saw bones, and cut vegetables into several parts. The rules for making classic French broth are finely chopped mirpois, but in your home kitchen you can simply cut each vegetable into several pieces. Cut the onion into 2 or 4 pieces and that should be enough.

Pre-roast

If all the ingredients are added raw to water, the result is a so-called white broth. For the red broth, which has a richer taste and aroma, as well as the color that gave it its name, vegetables and bones are pre-fried. To do this, they must first be chopped (slightly larger than into white broth), and then fried in a pan or baked under the grill until golden brown, and in some places even tan: the grill method seems to me more preferable. After that, the broth is boiled as usual.

When to salt the broth?

From time to time you can find two recommendations for cooking broth, which almost contradict each other. First, the broth must be salted at the end. The second – if you want to get boiled meat, salt at the end, if you want to get broth, salt at the beginning. Whom to believe? .. Both theses are not without foundation – on the one hand, the broth will boil away, and having salted it at first, you can miss it, on the other hand, salt helps to “draw out” aromatic substances from the ingredients. Therefore, I do this: I literally add a pinch or two of salt at the very beginning of cooking the broth, and finally salt it at the end. This is a universal technique, which, however, must be used with caution if you cook broth for a sauce, which is then planned to be boiled several times – in this case, it is better to salt not the broth, but the ready-made sauce, so as not to oversalt.

First water

Another common recommendation is to drain the “first water”, that is, fill the bone with water and bring it to a boil, drain the resulting broth, pour in new water, and only then start cooking the broth itself. The arguments in favor of this approach, I must say, do not sound quite convincing: supposedly the first water takes away most of the harmful substances contained in meat and almost hormones with antibiotics, but I have not read at least one serious study on this topic. In some cases (for example, when cooking broth from pork knuckle), this method really has a right to exist, in others I do not use it. I leave the final decision to you, especially if you are cooking for children.

Removing foam

As the water approaches the boiling point, a repulsive foam appears on the surface of the future broth, which is usually removed with a spoon or strainer. This foam is nothing more than the protein contained in meat and bones, which, under the influence of high temperature, denatures and rises to the surface. There is nothing harmful or dangerous in it, so the foam is removed primarily for aesthetic reasons: if this is not done, the foam will split into small particles, which will make the broth more cloudy. As a rule, the more intensely the water boils, the more foam is formed, so if you correctly regulate the heat under the pan, its amount will be minimal. That is why the easiest way to cook a transparent, like a tear, broth without unnecessary hassle is to do it in a multicooker: this is the very case when the use of this device is more than justified.

Straining the broth

The finished broth is filtered with a colander and, preferably, folded in several layers of gauze. Valuable advice that I learned from smart books: after filtering the broth, do not rush to throw out the contents of the colander, but press it firmly with a slotted spoon. This will give you a few more drops of broth, the richest in flavor and aroma.

Broth lightening

In case you did not skim the foam very well or cooked the broth over too high a heat, it will turn out to be rather cloudy. There is nothing wrong with that, but a number of dishes, primarily soups, involve the use of a clear broth (for, again, for aesthetic reasons). For these purposes, the finished broth can be clarified. The simplest way that I use for this (I must say, infrequently) is to beat two egg whites, add to the slightly cooled broth, bring it to a boil again, remove the foam that has come out and strain through cheesecloth.

There are also more ingenious ways to clarify broth, in which, along with whipped proteins, crushed eggshells, minced meat, ice or even pressed caviar are used, with which the broth was clarified in pre-revolutionary Russia. Those interested can find information about these methods on their own.

Removal of fat

Everyone seems to know about this, but nevertheless. The easiest way to remove as much fat as possible is to put the strained broth into the refrigerator. Under the influence of the low temperature, the fat will rise to the surface of the broth and harden, after which it can be simply removed with a spoon.

Freezing broth

It often happens that you do not need all or part of the cooked broth right now, but in the distant future. The broth can stand in the refrigerator for a couple of days, but if you plan to use it later, it is better to pour the broth into plastic containers or bags and freeze (sign the container if you have several different stocks in your freezer). A more sophisticated way is to boil the already strained broth several times, cool and freeze in an ice container. The resulting “bouillon cubes” can be used as needed to prepare soups, sauces and other dishes.

Recipes

I think that theory will be enough for this and you can move on to practice, that is, in fact, to cooking the broth. All recipes listed here are universal – they can be used to prepare any dish, if necessary, adjust the broth recipe to your liking and according to plans for its further use, for example, a rich lamb gravy can be prepared by boiling lamb bone broth according to the recipe for red broth and boiling it several times until thick.

Chicken bouillon

It is best to freeze the bones every time you cook and butcher chicken, and when you have enough of them, put them in a saucepan, add water and bring to a boil. Shortly before the boil, foam will begin to appear on the surface of the water – remove it, and then add coarsely chopped vegetables, parsley and black peppercorns.

Cook the broth over low heat for 3 hours, skimming as needed, season with salt shortly before cooking and strain after removing the pot from heat. If you bake the chicken bones in the oven until golden brown before boiling, you can similarly boil the red chicken broth.

White beef broth

Cover the bones with water, place over medium heat and bring to a boil. Skim off the foam shortly before the boil, then add the coarsely chopped vegetables, herbs and spices. Simmer the broth over low heat for 4 hours (or longer), skimming as needed, season with salt shortly before cooking and strain at the end.

Red beef broth

Before cooking the broth, place the bones and vegetables, chopped slightly larger than for the white broth, in a baking dish and place them under the preheated grill. Bake the ingredients of the future broth, turning them periodically, for half an hour, or until they are covered with a golden crust on all sides.

Remove the mold from the oven, transfer the contents to a saucepan, cover with water, put on medium heat and bring to a boil. There will be little foam – most of the protein has already curtailed – but you still need to remove it. Then reduce heat, add herbs and spices, and simmer broth over low heat for 4 hours (or longer), skimming as needed. Salt the broth shortly before cooking, and strain at the end.

Fish broth

For fish broth (unless you cook something like Finnish salmon soup with cream), usually take lean fish – flounder, pike perch, cod, and so on. Pour the fish heads and bones, as well as coarsely chopped vegetables with cold water, put on medium heat and bring to a boil. Remove foam, add herbs and black pepper, pour in wine, reduce heat and cook broth for 30 minutes: if you cook fish bones longer, broth will start to taste bitter. Remove broth from heat, salt and strain.

Vegetable broth

Pour the coarsely chopped vegetables and spices over with cold water, place over medium heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, add herbs and simmer for an hour, then remove pan from heat and let cool. For a richer taste of the broth, you can put it in the refrigerator for 24 hours, and only then strain.