Drink Eat Play: Homemade Veal Stock

When I started reading the recipes for the meat entrees in The French Laundry Cookbook, I realized that every single meat dish required an ingredient called, "Quick" X Sauce, where X is Duck, Lamb, Veal, etc.. These sauces are anything but quick. To exemplify this, one of the ingredients for the sauce is Homemade Veal Stock, which takes about 24 hours to make. Now, I have made soups and stocks in the past that have taken five or six hours, so I said to myself, what the hell, I'll give it a try. The result was marvelous.

First, I obtained ten pounds of veal bones from my local butcher. I went to Esposito's again, as they always have what I want and at relatively inexpensive costs (they were $1-2 a pound). I also grabbed some extra bones of different animals (lamb, duck, etc) to make sauces for some future dishes you will see.

Step 1 -- The "blanching of bones for clarification(1 - 1.5 hours). I rinsed the bones under cold water and covered them with clean, cold water in a large stock pot. I slowly brought this pot of water to a simmer. It took just over an hour. I skimmed and moved the bones around a little (not too much!) and skimmed some more, removing the impurities. There was a lot.

I ran them under cold water and rinsed all the gunk off. The stock pot was also filled with gunky material that stuck to the bottom, so I had to rewash it completely. Mind you, this stock pot is as large as a small television so it is quite the hassle to clean. It can barely fit in my sink!

Here are the cleaned bones, ready for step 2.

Step 2: Veal #1 -- The initial extraction of flavor from bones and aromatics to obtain a first liquid (5-6 hours).

I placed the cleaned veal bones in 12 quarts of cold water in the stock pot and brought this up to a simmer gradually. This took about an hour an a half. I also skimmed continuously.

When it was at a simmer, I added the aromatics, tomatoes, and tomato paste.

First, the tomato paste:

While the bones were blanching, I prepared the mirepoix of aromatics: carrots, leeks, onions, bay leafs, garlic, thyme, parsley.

I added the tomatoes and aromatics:

To give you an idea of how big this stock pot is, here is a side view:

I let this simmer for four hours, skimming the entire time.

I reduced and strained and skimmed...

And more...

Until four hours later, I had this:

I strained all the solids and reserved them in another bowl.

Then I strained the rest through a tamis. It fit perfectly over my stock pot:

Then a chinois:

I put this in an ice bath in my sink and when it was cooled, I put it in my fridge.

Step 3: Veal #2, or remouillage -- The second extraction of flavor to obtain a second liquid (5-6 hours). Remouillage is the French term for the "remoistening," or second extraction from the bones.

I returned the bones and aromatics and other solids to a clean stock pot and added 12 quarts of water and slowly brought this to a simmer...

I simmered this for four hours until it had reduced.

I strained this through a tamis and a chinois again, discarding all the solids.

Here we can see both Veal #1 (right) and Veal #2 (left). Remarkable colors.

Step 4: The "marriage" of Veal #1 and Veal #2 -- I mixed both together into a third stock pot and slowly brought this to a simmer. This took another 1-1.5 hours.