The World Table

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Stock & Fond Atlas · Sauce

Prawn Head and Shell Stock

  • Intermediate
  • 40 min
  • roughly 4 of 4 for cost

umami-deep · herb-fresh · bright · nutty-toasted Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, fresh herbs arguing happily on top, closing toasted and warm.

Ingredients

  • 800 g prawn heads and shells, or langoustine and crab shells
  • 60 ml neutral oil
  • 150 g onion, diced
  • 100 g fennel, diced
  • 80 g carrot, diced
  • 30 g tomato paste
  • 60 ml brandy
  • 150 ml dry white wine
  • 1.8 litres cold water
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 4 tarragon stalks
  • 5 g salt

Equipment

Rolling pin · Fine sieve

The skills inside

Deglazing & pan saucesReducing a sauceFrying the paste until the oil splitsStraining & passing through a sieveSkimming: foam, fat and a clear broth

The words inside

Tarragon

Allergen screen

Found: shellfish · alcohol

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

  1. Dry the shells on paper. Heat the oil in a wide pan until it shimmers, add the shells in one layer and press them flat, cooking 6-8 minutes until deep coral and smelling toasted rather than scorched. 8 min
  2. Add the onion, fennel and carrot and sweat 6 minutes, then stir in the tomato paste and cook it until it darkens to brick and smells sweet instead of tinny. 6 min
  3. Deglaze with the brandy, then the wine, scraping the fond off the base, and reduce until syrupy.
  4. Cover with the cold water, add the bay, tarragon and salt, bring to 85C (185F), skim, and hold 45 minutes. 45 min
  5. Crush the shells lightly with the end of a rolling pin, strain through a coarse sieve, then pass again through muslin.

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
Albariño
Also Right
Champagne
From the Taps
Pilsner or witbier
Zero-Proof
White grape & tonic

Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Prawn Head and Shell Stock Technique: Deglazing & pan saucesThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Stock & Fond Atlas kitchen