Ultranormal

Tag: stock

  • Southern Pork Ramen Broth

    Southern Pork Ramen Broth

    I volunteered to make “meat and a lot of it” for the annual Savannah-Chatham Citizen Advocacy Covered Dish Supper, and decided I’d try my hand at smothered pork chops. My plan was to make pork stock, make gravy from it, then sous vide the pork chops (all 35 pounds of them), so I could do most of the prep the weekend before and then just throw it all together. It mostly worked. I could never get the gravy to thicken, I think because of all the fat in it. But, the stock was delicious and I should have just taken it and a bunch of spoons (the pork chops were delicious – sous vide and pork go really well together).

    I used a 2 gallon stock pot, so scale this appropriately for the amount of liquid you’re going to use!

    So, I’ll skip the gravy part that didn’t work, and instead just share my bonkers “Southern Ramen Broth a la Momofuku” recipe with you.

    Ingredients:

    • 1 pound sliced pork belly
    • 1 pound jowl bacon (or bacon if you can’t find jowl bacon – something that’s lightly cured and not full of artificial flavor)
    • 2-3 pounds of country ribs (or shank or shoulder).
    • 3 giant onions (or 3lbs however you want to get there), quartered
    • 3 giant carrots (or 1lb)
    • 6 celery stalks
    • 1 bunch of green onions, with the root end taken off
    • 2 bay leaves
    • 3-5 garlic cloves, smashed
    • Some thyme and rosemary
    • A quarter cup of soy sauce
    • A quarter cup of Worchestire Sauce
    • A bunch of salt (a couple tablespoons probably)
    • A quarter-cup-ish of black peppercorns, just leave ’em whole
    • I also threw in some onions I’d tried caramelizing in my pressure cooker. So, if you have 3 more giant onions and some time, throw ’em in your slow cooker on high for 2 hours and then throw them in the pot too.

    And to assemble all this mess:

    • Put your biggest stock pot on the stove on medium heat.
    • Throw in the bacon and pork belly and let it render down some.
    • When it smells amazing, throw in the country ribs and onions, carrots and celery. Mix ’em up until you can smell the onions.
    • Throw in the salt and peppercorns and stir around a little.
    • Pour as much water as will fit in the stock pot.
    • Throw in the soy sauce and worchestire sauce and the herbs and stir a little.
    • Keep it on medium until it starts to bubble along gently, then turn the heat down to medium low.
    • Check on it every 30-45 minutes and give it a stir. There’s no need to skim it. This is ramen broth. It’s supposed to be ugly.
    • Let it bubble away for for 4-6 hours depending on your patience.
    • Taste and add salt or black pepper if it needs it.

    After it’s reduced by about a quarter, you can take it off the heat, let it cool for 20-30 minutes, strain it, and then cover and refrigerate for 24 hours (you could eat it right away if you want). I like letting it get all solid and then taking a half to 2/3 of the fat off the top, and reheating just what I need.

    If I was going to turn this into a bowl of ramen, I’d make some ramen noodles, a pork chop or two, caramelize some Vidalia onions, get some shredded carrots and thinly sliced green onions in a bowl and then pour the broth over the top.

    Another idea would be to get some fresh shrimp, put them in the bowl raw and then pour piping hot broth over the top, which should cook the shrimp (like the beef in pho).

    You probably can’t go wrong no matter what you add to it. The broth, especially if you let it go the full 6 hours, can stand up to anything you throw at it.

  • Instant Pot Chicken Stock Gone Wild

    We got an Instant Pot after Thanksgiving, and it’s probably the single greatest kitchen purchase I’ve ever made. We make dinner in it at least three times a week now.

    My latest Instant Pot adventure is an attempt to cure my cold with chicken stock. I took what I liked from the Hainanese Chicken (garlic, ginger and green onions) and combined with with a classic chicken stock recipe (onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves) and ended up with a delicious delicious monster.

    This cold doesn’t stand a chance.

    Here’s the approximate recipe:

    Ingredients

    • 1 small whole roaster, quartered (or you can just throw in some backs and thighs).
    • 2 large onions, quartered, also take the backbone out separately
    • 2 large carrots, sliced
    • 4 celery ribs, sliced
    • 5-6 green onions, chopped
    • 5 cloves of garlic, minced
    • 3″ finger of ginger, sliced
    • 1 tablespoon of salt
    • a bunch of black pepper (6-7 turns of our big grinder or, I don’t know, a dozen whole peppercorns)
    • 4 slices of bacon, chopped (I forgot about that… I had some, so I threw it in)

    Directions

    1. Turn your Instant Pot on Saute
    2. Throw in the bacon and stir it around until it’s rendered out a bunch of oil. I also threw in the backbone here to render out some chicken fat just for fun.
    3. Throw in the garlic and ginger and stir until you can really smell them (you don’t want them to burn)
    4. Cancel the saute.
    5. Throw in all the veggies
    6. This is the tricky part… it took a little fiddling to fit all the chicken in, but you can do it! I laid the leg quarters next to each other and then the breast pieces fit in along the sides. You might need to squish the veggies down. Or, it might work better to put the chicken on the bottom and the veggies on top. I don’t know. Do whatever works for you.
    7. Pour in enough water to get to the Max line (but not over, seriously, the Instant Pot gods will be angry)
    8. Put the lid on, seal it up, hit the Soup button and then set the time to 60 minutes.
    9. Let it naturally release (don’t go in and flip the vent thingy as soon as it beeps). That full, it’ll take at least 20 minutes and mine took 40.
    10. Pull out the chicken and then strain everything else through a fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth.

    I served mine with just the shredded chicken and some rice noodles. The veggies from the pot were all pretty obliterated and mushy, so I didn’t want them. But, they were tasty, so that’s up to you.

    I thought of it more like ramen broth where I’m adding it to pre-cooked noodles, meat and other veggies. And it was tasty, so I don’t think I was wrong.

    Enjoy!

  • Vegetable Stock in the Crock Pot

    A simple title, but this is a really simple recipe. I decided after a tough week and after seeing someone mention it on Instagram, that I really needed 15 bean soup. Instead of just using water, I decided to try making homemade vegetable stock. I had some veggies and I have a crock pot. How hard could it be?

    Not hard at all. I have a mammoth 6 quart crock pot, so you might need to reduce the amounts of things if you have a smaller one.

    This is a mishmash of a bunch of different recipes I found online with most of the ingredients doubled and a couple added. This stuff comes out really savory and a lot richer (not subtle at all) than other vegetable stocks I’ve tried before – and way better than anything I’ve ever had out of can.

    Ingredients

    • 2 small tomatoes, quartered
    • 2 smallish sweet onions, quartered
    • 1 bunch of celery, cleaned and w/ the butt chopped off. Leave the leaves!
    • A bunch of carrots, chopped up.
    • 1 tablespoon-ish of salt
    • 1 tablespoon-ish of minced garlic
    • 1 teaspoon of dried oregano
    • 1 squirt of Sriracha
    • 2-4 peppercorns (I put in 3x that many and it’s really peppery – it’s good, but a little goes a long way).

    Directions

    1. Put everything in the crock pot
    2. Fill your crock pot up with water, almost to the top but not quite.
    3. Cook on low for 6-7 hours
    4. Strain out all the bits – mine came out a little cloudy, probably because of the tomato. If you care about that, then you might want to strain it through a coffee filter or cheesecloth.
    5. Let cool for 30 minutes
    6. Put it in the fridge
    7. Make something awesome with it later, or just drink it and get superpowers.

    It ended up producing a little over a liter of stock – I think using fewer vegetables would have been just as effective and produced more stock.

    I’m making 15 Bean Soup with mine, but you could use it for pretty much anything, or just drink it right up. We had more than would fit in the container for the fridge, so Jen and I both had a mug and it was great!

    Enjoy!