Knowledge Base > Eric Wynkoop - Open Office Hours

Open Office Hours

Eric Wynkoop - Open Office Hours

This event was on Tuesday, November 23, 2021 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Eric Wynkoop in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to ask anything – from cooking techniques to co… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

What's the difference between a broth, a bone broth, and a stock?

Answer:

Okay, so my quick answer is they're really the same thing. Okay, this might come as a surprise to you because both in a rouxbe courses, you know, we talk about stock and broth as something different. And also if you look at other sources other cookbooks and websites many many people talk about broths and stocks as being you know, fundamentally different things, but I'm here to tell you that they're fundamentally the same thing with some Nuance to differences. Okay. Now I've I've read through historical texts La Roost gastronomique among other textbooks that focus on the the history of stock and broth development in the classical kitchen and I've also taken a look at product labels at the grocery store and I've compared bone broth and stock and and broth and you know, you look at the names on packages you look at the ingredients and then you see that they're the same thing. Label differently. Okay. So let me provide some broader context. Okay a broth and a stock. Yeah, they're a little different but they reside on the same Spectrum. Okay, where a stock is at one end and a broth is at the other end. So a stock, you know, we think about as being a flavorful liquid that is based on Bones. In this case. I'm going to use the example of bone stock. Okay, so stock again. We talked about being based upon bones or as broth we talk about being based on meat. All right, so if we go back in time All right. This idea of making stock from Bones was based on the concept of utilization. Right? The efficient kitchen bones are a byproduct of butchering where we're going to remove the the muscle that has higher value because we can cook all kinds of dishes with that. And so what's left over is a bunch of Bones. Now, there's still flavor in that there's still flavor value that can be extracted via the simmering process that moist heat cooking method. Okay. And so that's where this idea of stop comes from. Whereas again a broth is basically based upon meat. Okay. So let's talk about the similarity because in the middle of that Spectrum here is where there's significant overlap and you're going to I hope understand what I mean. When I say that these flavorful liquids a stock and a broth are fundamentally the same thing. Okay now based upon my experience and again things that I've read, you know, if you're if you're fabricating a chicken, let's say and you're putting bones into the pot of water to make stock right this idea of stock then I mean depending on your your butchering skills. There might be a little bit of meat left on the bones. Okay. So we start to get closer toward. What a broth is Right based upon meat and there are times when there are just sort of meat scraps left that ought to be utilized because they have value flavor value and then so we just put those into the stock pot along with the bones. And so here we have the introduction it even more meat right into that pot. So hopefully you can see where a stock while sort of Um, you know fundamentally we talk about is being based upon bones. It can certainly have meat in the pot. There's nothing wrong with that so long as from a a value perspective you're comfortable with that. Okay, in other words, especially okay in a business setting again, the meat has more value being prepared and sold as some other preparation van being simmered in water and that that flavorful water or liquid then being used in cooking. Okay, and then when it comes to making a broth, okay, let me take a little tangent here and also mentioned the usage of these terms. Okay, they'll come back to the the comparison here, but The term stock is used as an ingredient. In a preparation, whereas the term broth is used to describe the finished product such as in a menu description. Okay, so that's going to be another difference between these terms and how they're used. Okay, so back to the production okay of these flavorful liquids. You know, it's not unheard of okay in a in a professional kitchen, for example that if we want to make a a you know, chicken broth, right some sort of a chicken soup that's going to be served that we first make stock. And then we add meat to that to finish and then we call it a broth. Okay, hopefully that makes sense that's part of the sort of the the efficiency and the the scale of operation that we might find in a restaurant just as an example. Okay. So this is why I say that stock in a broth are fundamentally the same they're at opposite ends of the spectrum with a lot of overlap in the middle. Okay, so, you know again we from from a consumer standpoint from a popular culture standpoint. We tend to separate the two and but I should say but they are fundamentally. The same.
Eric Wynkoop

Eric Wynkoop

Director of Culinary Instruction

rouxbe.com