Norwegian & Icelandic · Side
Brunost
- Advanced
- 60 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners, melting away silken.
Ingredients
- 5 litres fresh sweet whey, drained from a cheese set with vegetarian rennet
- 400 ml double cream
- 200 ml whole milk
- 3 g fine salt
- neutral oil, for the mould
The skills inside
Deglazing & pan saucesSkimming: foam, fat and a clear broth
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Boil the whey hard in a wide pan, skimming the pale foam of albumin that rises in the first 20 minutes, until it has reduced to about a fifth and the colour has gone from water to straw. 20 min
- Add the cream and milk and carry on reducing, now stirring often and scraping the corners, until it is a thick fudge that holds an open channel when you draw the spoon across the base.
- Pull the pan off the heat, stand it in a sink of cold water, and beat hard as it cools to about 60C (140F); it will lighten in colour, stiffen and lose its shine.
- Pack while still warm into an oiled mould, pressing out air pockets, then cool and chill overnight until firm enough to take a wire.
- Shave paper thin over dark bread, or melt two or three slices into a pan sauce for game.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Deglazing & pan sauces 49 recipes
- The pan still holds its fond. Nothing has been rinsed, wiped, or soaked, and the browned layer is intact on the floor.
- Excess fat was poured off first and the browned layer left behind; the fat is not the flavour and a sauce carrying all of it will not come together.
- The liquid went into a still-hot pan and the floor came clean: scraped while it bubbles, the base goes from stuck brown to bare metal and the sauce darkens as it takes it up.
- The fond was brown and not black. A burnt floor dissolves into bitterness that cannot be seasoned out, and is better washed away than deglazed.
- Reduced first and seasoned afterwards, tasted at the consistency it will be served at rather than at the start.
Where it goes wrong The pan was left to stand and go cold before anybody came back to it. Cold fond will not dissolve, so the scraping lifts nothing, and the sauce arrives thin and pale with the flavour it was supposed to carry still welded to the metal.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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