Posted 06 30 2018
As I refuse to believe you, you ancient one, are today unaware of what even a reductive (and a little misleading) explanation of the Maillard reaction might be, beyond a knowledge of its mere name, I am offering the following largely by way of its being a conscious (0n my part) redundancy (on your part).
As you are a master of tactics serving an ulterior strategy, which, perhaps wisely, always goes unexpressed unless someone catches you out, I don’t doubt that the charade of ignorance you have alleged to have evinced in yourself serves some other purpose. And especially as it’s inconceivable that you’d expect a practical assessment as personal guidance from a Harvard sophomore – regardless of her level of prescience, and especially irrelevant to her computer tech skills, which I understand have impressed you (but that’s easy, given the level of yours), because I am simply not credulous that she is capable of gauging the worth of you knowing the value of the science behind the Maillard reaction to the practical betterment of your cooking, which seems to be, if one is to believe your assertions, to be largely a seat-of-the-pants series of experiments, based largely on your recollection of your mother’s techniques, not to mention a through immersion in the findings of a true scholar of these matters, Toni-Lee Capossela, in the methodology derived from her exhaustive study of masters, far beyond the possible ken of the miraculous Cassandra, which were then inculcated in your restaurant staff. I recall, quite clearly, those stalwarts to have been deliberately selected for cooking positions because of their ignorance of any methodology, good or bad, which might have served to pervert or contaminate what you intended to drum into them. And that included the prodigy, whom I’ve been given pause to remember you had your own reasons (in your sacred text, Dom’s, An Odyssey) practically to beatify for his genius, I mean Frankie, who I recall as well was 15 0r 16, when you hired him, though claiming to be older, and could not have had the experience to buttress the skills he did, indeed, pick up en passant at Dom’s.
So, just to help you out, in case you do, in fact, have a reason for feigning ignorance, or even simply bringing the subject up, only to shoot it down as irrelevant on the strength of some not merely vague, but wholly insubstantial, if not wholly murky, judgment from a childhood buddy of your daughter, I attach some texts that might help you gather your wits to formulate a better denial of the importance of knowing this, as part of the necessary store of knowledge of any cook with the capability of turning food out that is not a bland, that is, tasteless assemblage of nutrients.
I was looking online for one of the two men I depend on for these matters. Preferably, if I can follow his somewhat more arcane and esoteric renderings of the science behind the artisanry, there’s Hervé This, whose Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor is a masterwork. Otherwise, there’s good old Harold McGee, that genial and accessible hero for, what? is it 50 years now?, of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.
But first, this far more compact bit, which I found while looking for Hervé (which is the gustatory version of doing so for Waldo), on this site, hitherto unknown to me, but with a very succinct paragraph about the virtues in culinary terms of the Maillard reaction (which Maillard was studying back then, in 1912, for wholly other reasons).
https://blog.khymos.org/2012/06/04/maximizing-food-flavor-by-speeding-up-the-maillard-reaction/
The Maillard reaction, which is also sometimes referred to as “nonenzymatic browning,” produces volatile compounds that contribute aroma and nonvolatile compounds that provide color, known as melanoidins. Some of these compounds contribute to the resulting flavor as well. The Maillard reaction imbues foods with a characteristic smell, taste, and color. High-temperature processes in particular, such as frying, roasting, grilling, and baking, rely heavily on the Maillard reaction for the characteristic aromas it produces. What would the crust of a freshly baked loaf of bread be without the Maillard reaction? What would beverages such as espresso, hot chocolate, or Irish stout be if the coffee, chocolate beans, or barley were not roasted to facilitate the Maillard reaction? Or the nice meat flavors of a beef roast? Or the smell of toasted white bread? Browned onions? The list is endless.
To get to Hervé’s possibly even lugubrious, much more geeky, exertions I had to log on to my research account at Bryn Mawr, because it turns out Molecular Gastronomy is a text book and most access, beyond acquisition of the volume – difficult, even though the original is in French, here in the south of France, and I also believe I already own it, somewhere in our cooking library – is behind a pay wall of another kind.
But what he has to say is more comprehensive. And this, pardon the expression, is just a taste.
Chapter 48
The Flavor of Roasted Meats
The flavor of roasted meats depends on their fat content.
Do fats impart a distinctive flavor to meats?
If so, which one?
It was long believed that lipids were capable only of dissolving odorant compounds, many of which are water insoluble. They have also been accused of giving meat a bad taste, turning rancid, or oxidizing during cooking. Nonetheless cooks have long known that the flavor of meat is affected by the fats it contains or the fats that are added to it during cooking. Today chemists can confirm that fats play a decisive role in Maillard reactions, whose products are the chief aromatic components of heated foods.
There are hundreds of odorant compounds, which vary according to the type of meat, the age of the animal, its diet, and the mode of cooking. Moreover, compounds present in minute quantities may be aromatically preponderant. One of the principal reactions responsible for generating tastes is the Maillard reaction between sugars (such as glucose) and amino acids. Named after Louis-Camille Maillard, a chemist in Nancy who first identified the reaction in 1912, it contributes to the flavor of bread crust as well as the roasted aroma of meats, beer, and chocolate, among other foods. This reaction also leads to the formation of the dark compounds called melanoidins, which give cooked foods their characteristic color.
Chemists have been investigating the precursors of the volatile compounds of meats for several decades. They first observed that these compounds have a low molecular mass. In addition to the reactive agents typical of Maillard transformations (amino acids and sugars), they found phosphate sugars, nucleotides, peptides, glycopeptides, and organic acids. The role of lipids, in particular, long resisted explanation. It was known that phospholipids (fatty acids linked to a hydrosoluble group that are very sensitive to oxidation) were responsible for the appearance of fatty and rancid notes, but in 1983 Donald Mottram and his colleagues at the Meat Research Institute in Bristol, England (now the Institute for Food Research), were the first to observe that they are also indispensable to the development of the characteristic taste of cooked meat. In 1989, their colleague Linda Farmer showed that lipids are involved in the unfolding of Maillard reactions, not only through their degradation products but also on their own account, changing the odorant profiles of roasted meats.
You, Dom, with your baroque, if not wholly tortuous, process for ensuring crispy brown skin on a roast fowl, including of all things rubbing in baking soda (as if there wasn’t enough sodium already in the abundance of salt you rub in as well – and all this after your fastidious exemption of any salt in the preparation of your basic chicken stock recipe, for “nutritional and health reasons,” you said... that’s a laugh, Mr. Go Ahead Eat All That Crispy Yummy Skin I’ve Taught You How to Embalm in the same way the ancient Egyptians did the mummies)! Saying “Poof” to the Maillard reaction and the presumption of that snippy Ivy Leaguer... What’s her cooking like?
Anyway, you might be interested in what the Greek guy on the Khymos.org blog post had to say about accelerating the browning of, say, onions, by including a little baking soda into the pan... And all because of the impracticality to cooking of a knowledge of the Maillard reaction.
I don’t wonder you were puzzled by the description you found, which, I’ll agree, is a little numb-witted, about the Maillard reaction. With the brown rings and all... What’s important to know is that it does happen, and what the optimal conditions are, because you alter the flavor of what you’re cooking, including a very broad range of foods, from bread to roast meat, if you induce, never mind amplify, or conversely deliberately prevent the Maillard reaction, under differing conditions. It’s even involved in the aging of booze in charred casks...
All of which suggests to me that Cassandra is not of age yet, and doesn’t know her white lightning from her bourbon. Which is enough for me not to go by her word. So what’s your excuse?
Posted 05 28 18
Dom
I think the impulse (drive? instinct? disposition? mysterious otherwise inexplicable at present tendency? ... any of these appeal more than others?) some humans have to explain phenomena that otherwise are, in fact, if only for now, inexplicable, especially for those folks in the general human state of profound ignorance of how the universe is – not how it works, or what dark matter is, or quantum physics, and like, uh, WTF is that? – by the existence of what are generally categorized as described only as spiritual in origin. And that require, call it what you will, faith, unquestioning belief, credulity, acceptance, and suspension of curiosity about most things except what certain higher-class minds like to call metaphysics, is the same impulse (DIDM...etc.) that makes the astonishment some feel about what other, OK, I’ll call them cynical, minds deflect from consciousness (largely for reasons of economies of using time productively) by calling them coincidences.
We allay anxiety that way, which seems, so far, from all evidence, to be an innate susceptibility of the animal known as human. You know, the naked ape. If there’s no apparent explanation, susceptible to that pitiful other condition we are subject to known as sentience and consciousness, well, it must be supernatural, and beyond our immediate apprehension using our so unreliable brains.
The better question for me is, do chimps and orangutans suffer from the affliction of recognizing coincidences? Their lives are seemingly, superficially so much less complicated than ours – for one, no internet, and for two, no so called “smart” devices – there are bound to be that many more of them. I mean coincidences. “Hey! I was just thinking how nice it would be if someone came along and began grooming that place on my back fur, between my shoulders, that I can’t quite reach, and is so freakin’ itchy sometimes, and whoa buddy! The next thing I know, there you are grooming me away... like you were just dying to do that? You know? Like?” Well, who knows? From all evidence, they do experience anxiety, so there’s some hope...
I also wanted, just to bring this back to earth, you remember earth, the planet we all are living on and trying to cope with as the venue that’s so troublesome, though not, it should be emphasized, because of any salient or even any recessive qualities of the planet itself, which would probably go along without us on it altogether (though differently, of course, not that we can suppose, except by imagining it – imagine: a sentient planet... not at all like a smart home – it’s even sensible of our presence, and, more’s the pity, even cares; unless of course, we embrace that Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon you gushed off about, and it makes us feel better positing in an Earth that thinks and feels and cares (above all).
So let’s get real and deal with real problems.
You see, you still have this internet problem, in that certain posts of yours, to which you find occasion to advert, namely posts about gin and tonic and, possibly, apparently, more spiritual matters, perhaps brought about by consumption of controlled amounts of said gin, well, those posts are just not appearing. Not anyplace I can find them.
Oh and one other thing, since we’re talking about the internet. It’s generally still conceded, albeit Donald Trump, alas, is still our president and has been for a year, four months, and about six days, that it’s, well, more civilized, old friend, if we are going to repeat the words, if only merely the express thoughts of someone else, that we provide attribution, or at least a reference to the original source.
I don’t know if this is the original source, but for sure, it sounds a lot like what you said, not verbatim, but close enough about the aforementioned Baader-Meinhof and allegedly related pehnomena: https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/
Out-of-the-blue? Fess up. What made you think of it?
Coincidence? [eerie theremin music wells up, or maybe the Twilight Zone theme music...] I don’t think so. Though, I mean, speaking of synchronicity, coincidence, the internet...
What’s more interesting, as long as I’m in that frame of mind (which, let’s face it, is more or less, always... so waddyagot?) is how in the world did it get called Baader-Meinhof, as there’s nothing weird or scientifically inexplicable about that gang of evildoers, and whose exploits (we call them terrorist crimes) kind of raised an immense amount of heck in Germany, starting in 1970 – which you and I can remember, but, well, these up and blooming generations, who think, at best, that Baader-Meinhoff is the name of a band, and have no substantive, in fact not even any insubstantial, evanescent or fleeting, context for understanding history, never mind the concepts of coincidence and statistical probability.
But, just asking.
Herschel
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From Dom to Herschel
Re: The genesis of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon-entry.
(Reminder to all: Baader-Meinhof syndrome is a mental phenomenon where one stumbles upon some obscure piece of information—often an unfamiliar word or name—and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly.)
So I’m walking to the Microsoft store at the Prudential Center to keep an appointment for technical support when I encounter a sign including the word ‘pedagogy, the third time I’d seen that word in the last twenty-four hours, ever since I’d looked it up: the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.
I recounted the episode to Tucker, my tech advisor at Microsoft, and he promptly looked it up, identifying the common experience as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
A bit of research on a variety of websites plus my own thoughts produced my Thought for the Day.
Not difficult.
Not brilliant.
But fun.
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Hi Dom,
I've taken note of your chicken stock recipe, and, though, in the main, it's very much OK and will produce stock that's just fine, it has the stamp of your, if I may say (well, even if I mayn't), vaguely autocratic attitude about cooking. You seem to think, well, I’ll put it this way: like so many cooks, while paying lip service to the dictum that one should do as one's predilections and experience takes one, you project the air of one who professes to have discovered the dernier cri in procedure and methodology.
As has been my experience in the mainly congenial give and take between us on culinary matters over several decades, you don't necessarily explain, but offer diktats. By the way, I use the word "culinary," that is matters of cookery, specifically; as I don't expect to agree with anyone about taste – nor the reciprocal; nor any other permutation, that is, generally when it comes to gustatory attitudes and opinions, no one who is truly independent of mind actually ever agrees with anyone else. You define, and we, presumably, distort or rebel or deviate from that true path. The closest I come in that vein is to say, "it works for me." I've encountered the cooking of too many cooks who have satisfied my palate to assume that I know the only way to do it – whatever "it" may be.
Also, as you know from reading my recipes (you do read them, right?), though you artfully demur from (which is my polite way of saying, you altogether avoid) commenting, even in private to me, that mine are, characteristically, rather more long-winded than yours seem to tend to be. But then, I'm not in a hurry, and you give me the impression of being so.
I do go on, it's true, though not merely as a facet of an idiosyncratic disposition when I can give myself leave to do so. I do go on, especially with something like a recipe, because another equally compelling (to me) facet of my I.D. is essentially pedagogical in nature, and I want to give people reading the recipe occasion to think about what they're doing as they do it. Not for the insights about me, necessarily, because when it comes to food, I'm not very interesting (and yes I know even older fowl can be tenderized by allowing to braise long enough in savory fluids). But because if they're a little uncertain, or untried, or timid, or in any way recessive in their confidence about their food preparation skills, it helps to know why you are doing something, what happens when you alter the variables (usually in the case of ingredients in a recipe, the volume, the age, the hydration, freshness, temperature, the sequence of introduction to the mix of all ingredients, and the duration of exposure to added heat or extracted heat in the course of preparation from start to consumption). And why? So you can question these things, and wonder what would happen if you altered this or that, or substituted this or that for that and this, or you might even be induced to experiment. In the case of experienced cooks, reading such a recipe could do various things intellectually, if not emotionally. It can be a small trigger to validation. It may trigger antagonistic thoughts, and give rise to constructive debate – even if only confined to their own consciousness. It could lead to discussion. All or any of which are potential progressive steps to interesting and engaging variants, at the least, and at best, to improvements or even progressive sensory improvements in the consumption.
I won't suggest that the things I thought (about your recipe) will improve in every imaginable way the result. But some will, that is, some things will, I am sure, introduce a variant that some people will prefer. The things I thought of came to me while reading your abbreviated discourse on the manner of supporting a tendency to frugality as a prime motive for making chicken stock in advance of anticipated, though unspecified, needs... as well as of course, providing the start of a good basic, if not (pardon the pun) wholly reductive set of instructions for making a fundamental staple of mindful estimable cookery (as opposed to the mere sustenance to be derived from the usual time-saving measures afforded by the bad habits of using packaged products kept in a larder, and primarily to serve as shortcuts in the preparation of meals intended more to nourish, for sure, but not to guarantee that the pleasure that great food can afford). And such pleasures, it has been proven time and again, reach optimal levels when the ingredients are prime, are fresh (where appropriate), or aged and preserved according to tradition, or are derived from legacy stocks of the various flora and fauna that provide the unmeasurable variety of species that constitute the ingredient set of any random recipe calling for such quality.
So, I comment, not strictly and specifically to take issue with what is your version of chicken stock making (which doesn't vary much, in fact, from most standard recipes taking the same approach), but to quibble openly with the largely implied superiority of aspects of your version. And to suggest some alternatives for your followers to consider, as well as some added ingredients, by way of emendation, and also, I aver, and I do this with my usual temerity: I'll also admit to trying consciously to constrain my usual nuanced air of hauteur, especially when talking to you.
First, I have a question for you, which I won't presume, despite what I said, to answer for you. You claim a few times that adding salt, to this particular recipe at least, is not a good idea for health and culinary reasons. And no, the question is not, "wherewith shall it be salted?" Rather, the question is – actually questions are: "why aren't you saying exactly what those reasons are? What bad things will happen if I add any salt to this stock recipe? How can you prove it?" Does this mean the sprinkling of sea salt along with fresh-ground black pepper I put on my steak before I grill it is a bad idea? Is it wrong to throw a tablespoon or so of kosher salt into the gallon of water boiling away for cooking my pasta?
I am not suggesting people salt away when making this (or any modified version of this) stock. Forfend!
I would suggest adding some whole peppercorns (black ones, maybe a half to a full tablespoon depending on the amount of stock being made). I would suggest adding a bay leaf for every two or three quarts of water used to simmer the stock. I would suggest a bouquet garni of fresh herbs tied together (with or without a shroud of cheesecloth), like thyme, rosemary, savory, to be added later in the fullness of time.
I would suggest adding whole skinned cloves of garlic, maybe one per quart of water. I would suggest in the same vain, adding maybe a tablespoon of good quality tomato paste (I've been using the kind that comes in tubes, imported from Italy, and often to be found made from the famous San Marzano plum tomatoes) — and why? For the same reason I'd add the bay laurel, the peppercorns, the herbs, and the garlic. For added notes of savoriness, and the depth they would provide. The tomato paste will add some acidity to help neutralize the solution, while adding a very slight amount of piquancy to the stock. The tomato paste will also add a bit of color, which otherwise will come only from the carrots, and from the onion skins (assuming the cook leaves any amount of skin on the onions added to the stock – being sure to remove the loose, dried-out, likely dirty outer layers of skin).
You'll notice I mentioned onions, whereas you cite leeks. Either way. But you might have mentioned including the green part of the leek, ensuring the leek has been thoroughly cleansed of dirt – as I've cautioned. And that reminds me about the celery.
Here's one of those places where it might be wise to suggest another alternative. I've taken to substituting a fennel bulb for any recipe calling for celery, largely because I prefer the flavor of the one over the other. And even more largely, because it's easier these days to find fennel of a higher quality, in terms of flavor, which is to say, having some, than it is to find celery that isn't industrially farmed and utterly devoid of most qualities to excite the palate, and yet over-abundant in woodiness and overly stringy – which seem to add a kind of non-specific bitterness to any infusion to which they've been added.
And while we're on the subject of the vegetables, it is to be inferred, that the eight ounces each (did you mean to say a half-pound?) of the three vegetable ingredients are to be added essentially whole, that is, in chunks. Is that what you meant? That's what I'd do. But this translates even more readily to a certain number, say, um, three, of large fresh carrots, rinsed clean of surface dirt, trimmed of greens, and perhaps cut in halves or thirds. The other vegetables should be trimmed of their roots and the inner core, which also may be bitter.
But let's turn to the chicken itself.
You suggest a large fowl, a nominal designation by which I assume you mean an older bird. It is the designation, though also called "hen," or "baking or stewing chicken," which are the class names recognized and differentiated by the USDA. Usually these birds are at least 10 months old, with, as you suggest, meat less tender than younger classes. Presumably you do this because your aim – and I'm making some inferences here – is to make a significant amount of stock, meant to be frozen and used as needed until the stock, so to speak, is depleted, when you'd start all over again. And essentially the "fowl" is dedicated to the making of stock. I do love the delicacy of that last sentence of yours in the recipe and the allusion to "flavor-depleted meat, bones, and vegetables." You mean, dispose of it all, of course, because all nutritive value has been extracted.
Well, here's where I'll submit an alternative approach, possibly heretical from your point of view.
I've already established we are far from being similar on at least the finer points of cookery. I'd suggest as well, that albeit chicken stock is, for me, a staple, and used in many many dishes I prepare, there’s not a need for abundance in our household. I don't drink the stock as broth or a beverage, and rarely, thank God, sick to such a degree that I need a hit of good old chicken broth for all its curative power. And my casseroles generally don't need "thinning" beyond a couple of tablespoons. The payoff for me, in terms of overall consumption, is that I don't manage to get through a quart of stock in a week, not cooking for two people, I don't. Hardly.
We have a fine Sub-Zero refrigerator freezer, which has ample room for frozen provisions that don't need restocking more than every week or two. Nevertheless there is hardly room to keep a store of four 1-quart containers of frozen stock (quaint, by the way, the "4-cup container" recommendation you make for storage; very much in keeping, rhetorically, with the 8 oz specification above — this would mean for me, keeping more than a month's worth of frozen stock on hand, taking up room in the freezer).
For all these reasons, let me suggest an alternative, as I said, and that is, consider roasting a chicken every couple of weeks. That would be a three to four pound bird. which, and I don't know about you, but for the two of us, it makes five, or even six delicious meals. I will warn you though, I don't stint on the quality of the chicken, which means I buy free-range birds, pastured if possible, coddled (if you like) if available, and costing as much as four dollars a pound or more. Chicken of this quality would make for a premium priced mains course in a white-cloth restaurant, so, to me, the investment is worth it. And you end up with a carcass, with bones already roasted (and therefore, for a number of reasons, more flavorful), not to mention the parts that are hard to consume, like wing tips, that join the carcass in the stock pot.
Yes, make your stock from the frame and all extraneous bits of a roasted chicken and all the bones of attendant appendages (wings, legs, thighs). With a chicken of the size indicated, say four pounds, the carcass and the vegetables (only two large carrots, one coarsely chopped medium to large yellow onion, and about a third of a fennel bulb, without any of the core or stalks, also coarsely chopped) can cook in a 4-quart pot with enough water to cover. Cook for even longer than your minimal three hours, at a very low simmer (180°, which means no bubbles), say for 4-6 hours. There's even a way to do this in a low oven and you can leave it overnight, but I always worry something will go wrong with an unattended stove, so I'll shut up now. If cooking for longer than four hours, the vegetables can wait for two hours before being added.
Cooking vegetables for a very long period of time, more than three or four hours, will extract not much more flavor, but will induce the vegetable cells to fill up with liquid, thereby reducing the amount of stock when you're done and are ready to dispose of the carcasses of all the "livestock" that infused your cooking product. Store the chicken stock – you should end up with about two quarts – some in the freezer and some in the refrigerator. Rather than nuking the frozen stock for ready use, I would suggest putting the frozen product in the refrigerator in advance... as you notice the refrigerated stock is running low. Do it a day or two ahead of time, and it will defrost without getting "bruised" by a poorly judged blast of microwaves in the act of trying to liquefy the stock.
Another alternative, if you have no desire to roast a chicken every time you need to replenish your stock supply is to use the method used in many Chinese food recipes to poach a chicken (usually an even smaller one, which means a younger one, and much more tender; anywhere from two to 2-1/2 pounds). Essentially you put the whole chicken in a pot with water to cover. Add a green onion (aka a scallion) or two and some slices of garlic, and, optionally, add about a tablespoon of cooking wine (aged Chinese rice wine is hard to come by, and incredibly costly, even by my standards – the stand-by alternative, especially in this kind of use, is a fine dry nutty sherry (the brand "Dry Sack" is always good). Bring the water to a gentle boil gradually over medium heat. Cook for about eight minutes at that temperature. Turn off the heat, and cover the pot off the burner, and allow to sit for at least a half hour, and no more than an hour.
Pick the carcass clean – the meat will be possibly the most tender chicken you have ever put into a dish requiring cooked chicken, from a salad to a pie - and then roast the frame and scraps and bones in a hot oven, from 350 to 400 degrees, for at most 15 or 20 mintues. Allow to cool, and use the frame to make stock, following my recipe alternative above as if using a roasted chicken carcass.
That's it.
I'll check in from time to time, in this targeted and dedicated way, and this content will appear in this form exclusively on Dom's blog. You may of course react however you like. It is very very unlikely I will respond in any way to anyone other than Dom. I am not taking the time to do this except to augment Dom's efforts here, and certainly not to invite commentary to which the respondent hopes I will reciprocate. Even less am I likely to rise to the provocation of trolling.
Bon appétit.
Herschel Adams
