Stock & Fond Atlas · Sauce
Fond Blanc de Volaille
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with a warm current of chile, fresh herbs arguing happily on top.
Ingredients
- 2 kg chicken wings and backs, chopped through the joint
- 4 litres cold water
- 150 g onion, peeled and halved
- 100 g carrot, in 3 cm pieces
- 100 g leek white, split and washed
- 80 g celery
- 4 parsley stalks
- 1 bay leaf
- 6 white peppercorns, cracked
Equipment
Fine sieve
The skills inside
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: celery
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
- Rinse the wings and backs under cold water until it runs clear, then set them in a tall narrow pot and cover with the 4 litres of cold water.
- Bring up slowly over about 40 minutes to 90C (195F), lifting off the grey foam as it collects. Never let it break into a boil. 40 min
- Hold at 85-90C for 3 hours, the surface trembling with one bubble every few seconds, and add the vegetables and aromatics for the final hour only. 180 min
- Ladle through a muslin lined chinois without pressing the bones, then cool fast over ice.
- Chill overnight and lift off the set fat cap. The stock beneath should wobble like a soft jelly; if it does not, you had too little collagen or too much water.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir or Gamay
- Also Right
- Chenin Blanc
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Verbena iced tea
Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.
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