Hello, I'm wondering if a Broth will have the same properties of a broth to solidify after it has cooled down?

What makes a stock solidify when cooled is the natural gelatin from the bones which is extracted over the long cooking period.

When making a broth, you are cooking the whole meat (not just bones). Therefore, it is much harder to extract gelatin unless you are cooking parts of the meat (e.g. chicken legs) where you might extract some gelatin but given the shorter cooking time, likely not as much.

Is browning of the meat and mirepoix ever done when making a broth? I really liked the improved flavor of the brown stock over the white stock and it seems like browning the meat and mirepoix would add great flavor to a broth as well. Might the browning in addition to the required simmer time might over cook the meat?

I made the chicken pot pies after making my broth today and it turned out great. I topped the pies with a beer bread batter rather than puff pastry and really liked the dumpling-like result. Puff pastry is to rich and buttery for my taste.

Good call Carol. Browning the meats, such as beef shanks, along with the mirepoix, especially the onions, will lend great colour and full flavour. That's how a beef BRODO is made. Don't worry about over-simmering the meat, but make sure you add only enough liquid to top the meats...any more will dilute both the broth and final flavour of the meat itself. Hope this helps.

Love the beer batter topping for your pot pie, by the way.

We have roast (small) chicken on Sundays, typically eating only the white breast meat. I then take the remainder including the leg meat and attempt a stock/broth. I remove the solids and strain the liquid and refrigerate to separate the fat. (It gelatinizes quite nicely, something I worried about till I did your lessons.) I then put all the solids (yes, including mushy carrots) together and have fine soup/stew lunches.

What do I have? A soup? a stew? The dark meat is especially good.

Keep up the good work.

Please I would like to know why no one would use hot water rather than cold water when you make a broth?

Thank you,

Cold water is purer than hot water, which comes from a hot water tank. Cold water also takes longer to come to a boil, which is a good thing when making stocks and broths as it gives the impurities more time to coagulate and rise to the surface.

For more information check out the lesson on
How to Make Stock

Hope this helps!

Yes your answer help a lot, because now I know the reason.
Thank you Dawn.

What type of meat should I use for beef broth? Also, I'm not quite sure when I'd use a beef broth over a beef stock. It seems to me that a stock would just have a lot more flavor...

Oxtail, beef short ribs...just like making stock really you want something has some gelantine and fat for added flavor.

As far as a stock being more flavorful than a broth, this is actually not the case. Broths are very flavorful, in fact there are some cultures that only use broths. For more information here is a very short lesson on How to Make Broth

Also this lesson on Broth Based Soups is full of helpful information about broths (dark or white broths).

Hope this helps!

I just watched the lessons on "How to Make Broth" and "Broth Based Soups", and I think I understand the difference between stocks and broths (cooking the bones vs. cooking the meat), I'm still not quite clear on why you'd use one over the other.

It seems that you use a broth more when it is closer to the final product, like serving a soup where the broth is the base. But why is the recipe for chicken pot pie a good one for broth rather than stock?

Why does the recipe for broth have salt but not stock?

What is the property of broth that makes it more appropriate for some things, and stock more appropriate for others?

Thanks!

You got it with regards to the difference between the two. Now why you would use one over the other...well you are on the right track here as well.

Broths are perfect for soups, especially those you are making from scratch (or when you don't have stock on hand). The reason it is great for chicken pot pie is because as you are making the broth, you are cooking the chicken for the pot pie...so basically you are killing two birds with one stone (sorry I couldn't resist).

That is not to say that if you had leftover chicken you couldn't make a great pot pie with stock, because you could.

Both stocks and broths are okay to have a bit of salt added to them...this will help to draw out some of the flavor from the ingredients. Many recipes call for no salt in stocks as they are used as the base for so many things. By not adding salt, you are able to better control the saltiness of dishes later. But like I said, a bit is okay, just don't over do it.

The property of a broth that makes it more appropriate, is that it is often more flavorful than a stock. In some countries, like in Italy they tend to only make broths. Some more often stocks, it depends more on the cook really. I mostly make stocks myself but there is nothing like a good chicken noodle soup made from a flavorful broth.

Hope this helps to clear things up for you. Cheers!

Thanks for the great reply!

What I'm hearing is that stocks and broths can be interchangeable. You really can use one or the other, depending on the style of the cook, what you have on hand, or if you need to cook the meat anyway for another purpose (like the pot pie example).

The big difference is that broths are more flavorful, so they are good for soups, where you might be eating them directly, without adding too much other stuff (other than garniture).

And so then the remaining question is, if broth is more flavorful, what is its advantage over stock? Why would some cooks choose to use stock more often over broth? Is it because if it's less flavorful, it can be used as the base for other dishes, and it won't overpower the final product with the taste of the stock itself and work better as a complement?

You are getting it Jon...nice work!

To answer your last question...stocks are most often made and used as they are the cheapest to make (but does take longer to make). And when I said, "broths are often more flavorful". I didn't mean to say that stocks are not also FULL of flavor.

I think you get it though, trust what you have learned, as you are definitely on the right track!

This Vietnamese Pho, is another great example of when broths are often used. But interestingly the meat is often not used in a Pho. All the bones and meat are added for flavor.

Assuming I do not want to make a dark broth, can I sear the chicken after making the broth with it?

I have never heard of this as the chicken is already cooked and searing it would only dry it out more...but to each their own. There are no rules saying you can't always give it a try. Cheers!

Considering that stock gets all the gelatin from the long cooking of the bones, can we say that stock is better for sauces, contributing to their texture? Does this then mean that maybe stocks are too thick/rich to be used in a clear soup like chicken noodle or Pho?
I'd also love to know what makes broths more flavorful than stocks, considering that it is cooked a short time and that I can't stand boiled breast meat which is often dry, flavorless and tough. Does all the flavor leach out quicker into the soup because there's more meat? Then, I have to ask, is there any merit to what I've heard: that all the flavor is in the meat and skin?
Wow, that's a lot of questions..In all these years, I've never really successfully resolved in my head the difference between stock and broth.

Here is much more info on this subject in this thread here. It seems that this is a popular question Manille and you are not alone. Have a read through that other forum thread and see if that helps to explain things a bit better for you. Cheers!

Hi Dawn,
I actually had read the entire thread before posting the question and these were still the questions that remained after...perhaps I'm just not connecting the proper synapses in my brain? :)

I had a pretty confident idea about all of this, but now, I am wondering if I am missing something. Isn't it ~mainly~ just this:

Broths -- in the case of chicken, e.g. -- are generally just a very useful by-product that we eagerly save when we happen to be stewing a chicken. Ordinarily, one would not stew a chicken just to get the broth as this would be very uneconomical when we can make stock from scraps.

OTOH, "intentionality" is a slippery concept. Needing a chickeny, flavoring liquid in a hurry, we might elect to stew a chicken "for the broth" but only with a good plan to make full use of the meat. To do otherwise would be like needing a quarter for a vending machine, getting someone to change a dollar bill and being indifferent to the other seventy-five cents. It might be true that our immediate motivation was to get the quarter, but it is something that we would never consider if we didn't know that we could also make good use of the other seventy-five cents.

Am I missing something? Isn't it really just Home Economics 101 and not at all about any subtle differences in stock v. broth.

Basically, both are flavorful liquids.

Broths are not necessarily just a by-product of another dish though. Both stocks and broths can be made intentionally for specific purposes. (i.e. chicken broth for homemade chicken soup / veal stock for demi-glace based sauces).

Both stocks and broths essentially follow the same steps; however, bones are generally used for making stock, whereas bones with the meat still attached are used to make broths (the cooked meat can be used for other purposes).

Broths tend to be highly flavoful and can be good enough to eat on their own (in the case of a soup broth - refer to the lesson on Broth-Based Clear Soups).

Stocks are usually added to a dish to support / enhance the flavors. Stocks are usually more gelatinous than broths because a higher ratio of bones are used. Stocks can also be reduced to intensify their flavor and create a sauce with plenty of body.

Marketing doesn't help. The terms are used interchangably and do make things confusing. Hope this explanation helps.

Thanks for that summing up...I think you've straightened me around a little bit. You all have tremendous patience, and I am sure you reach a point sometimes where you feel that a topic has already been more than adequately covered. Thanks for your patience.

No worries. Happy flavorful-liquid making! :)

Hi everyone, Just finished making this and it is AWESOME. You guys and girls are the absolute best. Love this website. JoAnn