ABSTRACT
Cooking foods in hot water is one of the oldest culinary techniques. Early humans learned that they could make their scarce food supply feed more people if they simply threw whatever bits of food they had into a container, covered them with water, and boiled the mixture to allow the food to flavor the water. A stock is a clear liquid created by extracting flavor and gelatin from beef bones, fish bones, poultry bones, or vegetables, plus other ingredients, in water. Mirepoix is used to flavor many soups and sauces in French and Italian cuisine. A brown stock normally includes some sort of tomato product, like tomato puree, usually half the amount, by weight, of the mirepoix. Chicken stock, made from unroasted chicken bones and trimmings, is one of the most popular stocks in soup making. Many chefs today have decided that it is too time-consuming to make stocks in-house.
