Question
Diane Dankert
Is there an optimum size cut of vegetables used in making stock? It would seem smaller pieces would be able to draw out more of the flavor and nutrients from the vegetables?
Answer
The answer, uh, is gonna depend upon the length of simmering time. And for any of the stock varieties that have a shorter simmering time, then smaller cuts are gonna be the way to go. In other words, you want to, um, increase the surface area to extract the flavor quickly. Um, on the other hand, if you have long simmering times, such as multi-hour simmering times, then larger pieces are quite fine. You'll have plenty of time to pull out the flavor from all the mepo. And, you know, I'll give you a a couple of examples. Um, you can make a vegetable stock, um, you know, in less than an hour simmering time, fish stock, you know, is even shorter. Probably 20 minutes or so is gonna be fine, uh, 30 minutes or so. And, uh, you know, in, certainly in, uh, professional settings where you're making large volumes of stock, um, you know, I was making, um, uh, you know, a a a dozen gallons at least, um, you know, every day of chicken stock and beef stock and vegetable stock. And in the case of the, um, beef and chicken stock, those would simmer overnight. So they would get, um, oh, simmer between eight and, and 12 hours of simmering time. And in those cases, you know, I would put in like a half of an onion. Um, and it would be a very, the volume was so large that there was a lot of prep and the, the was, uh, um, you know, a, a a a half of a a 50 pound bag of, of onions and, you know, a third of a case of, of carrots and celery at a time. So, um, it also helped, you know, uh, to streamline the prep time by just using large pieces, you know, and sometimes just whole pieces of things could go in for such a long simmering time. But anyway, that's your answer. Um, short simmering time equals small pieces, long simmering time equals large pieces.
