French Laundry at Home: Veal Stock

So over the past week I've been a busy boy, so much so that I'm going to split this weeks French Laundry cooking escapade into three posts.

Ironically enough, one of my favorite things to do when I cook our of these fancy restaurant cook books are the various stocks and broths that they use throughout the meal.  One of the primary stocks that the French Laundry uses is a veal stock, so that's what I made last weekend.

It's dishes like this that make me absolutely love the internet.  Stock isn't really a stock without bones, in this case veal bones.  I live in a subdivision in Central Illinois, where the hell am I going to get veal bones.  I have some food connections, but no one I know raises veal.  Hello google!  Type in mail order veal bones and after like 10 seconds I'm lead to a place headquartered in California but ships from New Jersey that supplies restaurants and can get me 25 pounds of veal bones shipped overnight.

So what makes French Laundry's veal stock unique is the fact that the bones aren't roasted, they are blanched.  I ordered 25 pounds of veal bones, the recipe for the stock calls for 10 pounds, but I don't have a pan nearly that big, or even enough storage for two stock pots the size I have s I cut the recipe in half and used 5 pounds now.  In reading through the cookbook I suspect I'll be making this stock again soon. The picture above is the five pounds of bones and water.  The recipe simply says twice as much water as bones so there's no exact amount for this first step, but I used about 6 quarts.

So the secret to French Laundry's method is bringing the pot to a simmer slowly.  So the way these were blanched is that the bones and cold water went into the pot and then hit the heat.  Once the water reached a simmer I turned the heat off and drained it and let the bones cool to room temperature. 

The next step was to make what the recipe called veal #1.  This included the blanched bones and another 6 quarts of water. 

The second key to stock is vegetables.  This stock included tomato paste, tomatoes, leeks, onions, garlic and carrots.  The veggies were chopped to various sizes and added to the bone and water mix once everything came to a simmer.  From there I simmered for 6 hours.

Once everything had simmered for six hours, I strained it, reserved the liquid as well as all the solids and held it overnight.  The next day I put the reserved solids back into the stock pot with a fresh batch of six quarts of water and brought it to a simmer and simmered for an additional six hours.  This mixture was strained again and reserved.

On the third day, I pitched the solids and put the two liquids back into the stock pot and simmered for 8 hours. 

This is what the stock looked like at the end.  From here I reserved a small portion of this for my dishes this weekend, the rest went into my freezer for use later.

While stock is simply one component of one component of a dish I still love making them.  I think it's because it takes much more than just throwing stuff in a pot and cooking the hell out of it.  It takes time and patience to get a stock right.