Foundation Stocks: Culinary Building Blocks

LOS ANGELES, late 1980s—After finishing business school in London, I came to Tinseltown to work in the property development business. If I wasn’t working, I spent my hard-earned dollars on discovering restaurants, as my passion lay in the kitchen and fine cooking.

Through sheer good luck and a family relationship, I turned up very early one morning in Michel Richard’s spotless kitchen at his then-flagship restaurant, Citrus, for a mini “stage.” Over the next 72 hours, I learned two essential lessons. The first was that the restaurant business is a life of unending hard work, surviving on thin margins. The second, more importantly for me personally at that time, I realized that although I was then a good home cook, any illusion I had that I could do something professionally with food fell to pieces in my first 10 minutes in his kitchen.

I arrived as the maître saucier and French chef de cuisine monitored his stocks. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Michel said I could do a stage starting this morning,” I replied. “Is he here?”

“Non, not right now,” said the chef as he looked me up and down. “You’re with me this morning.” Nodding to the six large, steaming pots on the massive stoves, he grabbed a handful of small spoons.

“Taste it and tell me what it is,” he said, handing the first spoon to me. He tasted as I did. My mind went blank. The aroma and flavor were so familiar, but I couldn’t spell it out.

“Alors—so?” I shook my head. He gave me a pitying look.

He took the lid off the next pot. “This one?”

“Fish stock,” I replied confidently. He shook his head, “Non!”

“It’s not fish stock?” I asked; I was genuinely confused.

“It’s a crustacean stock—you should know the difference.” He stepped up to the next pot. “This?”

I’ll save you the rest of the excruciating details; suffice it to say I failed the taste test for every one of them. The last stock, made with olives, was extraordinary in its depth of flavor and intensity. He reduced my sense of knowing about basic stocks to nothing. It was a completely humbling experience. I left simultaneously deflated and enthusiastic, if that’s possible. I would have to do better.

He took pity on me then and asked if I had had breakfast or a coffee. I shook my head, not entirely trusting that I could speak without a wobble in my voice.

He handed me a strong espresso and a piece of baguette, sighed, and said, “Let’s start again—what’s your name?”

This was my introduction to creating more refined food, and it all began with stocks.

Three days later, I left the kitchen armed with more culinary know-how, a few unique recipes up my sleeve, a small coterie of new friends and a long list of essential techniques I had to learn to become a better cook.

“It all begins with the foundations,” he had said, les fonds or fonds de cuisine. Like the foundation of any structure, stocks are the building blocks of cooking for sauces, soups, stews and braises.

I had long made a basic chicken stock, but there was evidently more to it than that. I plunged into cookbooks, consulting the culinary masters on the subject: Escoffier, Raymond Oliver, Julia Child and many more. Essentially, they all said the same thing: Use the best ingredients you can find to make the freshest, cleanest stock (or broth) possible. With that in mind, I started my stock education, and the fundamentals came down to these salient points:

Stocks are clear liquids that result from gently simmering bones, meat or fish and vegetables in water, usually with aromatic herbs and spices.

There are four principal stocks: beef, chicken, fish and vegetable.

Beef stocks are made with beef knuckles, joints and feet to achieve a rich flavor and velvety texture. Sometimes referred to as fond brun, this stock is golden to deep mahogany in color, created by roasting bones and vegetables to intensify their flavor. Beef stocks are an elemental part of dishes like pho, short ribs and French onion soup and are used in braised dishes to add depth of flavor. These stocks take 6–24 hours to develop their rich flavor profile.

Chicken stocks are usually made with uncooked chicken carcasses, chicken legs or feet and a mirepoix (a chopped mix of onions, carrots, leeks and celery). However, you can also use the carcass from a previously roasted chicken (you can freeze the bones for later use) to make stock after removing any remaining meat. The bones are full of collagen and result in a nutritious gelatinous finish. This silky stock is the foundation for many soups, for cooking pasta and risotto, for poaching and for myriad sauces. An excellent light chicken stock can be made in two hours.

Fish stock (or fish fumet) is quick to make, usually in about 30 minutes or less. However, it is delicate; overcooking will dissolve the calcium in the bones, resulting in a cloudy, chalky stock. It is made by very gently simmering fish bones in water with aromatics such as leeks, carrots and fennel and herbs such as parsley and tarragon. Fish stocks are used for poaching fish, making soups and for cooking rice, risotto and pasta in seafood dishes.

Vegetable stock is versatile, inexpensive, quick and easy to make. Using a foundation of onions, leeks, carrots and celery, other vegetables and trimmings can be used in all manner of soups, sauces and as the cooking liquid for pasta and grains and can be used as a healthy alternative to meat- or poultry-based stocks. It is an excellent way to use vegetable trimmings. I like to save all the carrot peelings, onion skins, leek greens and parsley stems by popping them all into a large freezer bag as I prepare food during the week. When I’m ready to make stock, I have all the ingredients ready and can simply tip them into a large stockpot and cover the vegetables with cold water. Thirty to 40 minutes later, I’ll have a lovely, clear, bright vegetable stock.

Simmering is the key! The gentle cooking of all these stocks is the recipe for a successful stock. Boiling bones causes the albumin in them to be released too quickly, resulting in a cloudy, sometimes chalky stock, which is also why only cold water should be added to the ingredients when you start your stock. Simmering will allow any impurities to rise to the top of the stockpot. It looks like an unappetizing, scum-looking, grey foam. Carefully remove this from the stockpot. After 40–50 minutes, there should be none left. Cook the stock uncovered, reducing the chance that the stock will boil.

Finally, stock and broth are technically different (except for the vegetable version), although they are often interchangeably used in recipes. Stocks are made with bones and have a more gelatinous texture. They are also unsalted. Broths are made with meat (or fish) and are more liquid. (For a detailed breakdown
of the science behind making stock, Harold McGee’s book On Food and Cooking provides an in-depth analysis of the processes involved.)

SANTA BARBARA, 2023—More than three decades have passed since I stepped tentatively into that restaurant kitchen. I have cooked thousands of meals since then and discovered new cuisines, techniques and foods, but the foundation of all I do has its roots in the stocks I learned to make then. There is always a batch of frozen vegetable and chicken stock in my freezer and a bag of trimmings ready to use for the next pot.

As Thomas Keller, famed chef of The French Laundry, said, stocks are “the base for everything else you’re going to do. And that’s why it’s so valuable to learn how to do this and so valuable to have it at home. It’s a life changer.”