Any ordinary pot or kettle can be used for preparing stock, but as a “digester” or stock pot is one of the most useful utensils known to the culinary art, and can be obtained at almost any hardware store, no kitchen should be without one. The cook, who is provided with a stock pot, and habitually uses it two or three times a week, can utilize all available scraps, and generally has a supply of stock on hand from which an acceptable soup, or delicious sauce can be improvised in a short time, and with very little trouble.
The stock pot should not remain on the stove or range, and fresh material be added from time to time to that which is partly or wholly cooked; but whenever a quantity of scraps accumulate they should be carefully prepared and put to cook.
SOUP STOCK.
A great many soups are made without the previous preparation of a specially distinctive stock. But stock has as legitimate an existence in soup making, as ferment has in bread making; and its recognition is quite essential to a perfect understanding of the subject. Stock is the base of soups. It is the fluid foundation with which other materials are mixed, and skillfully incorporated into soups, that in modern bills of fare are bewilderingly designated potages, purees, and consommes.
Soup stock, in the strictest sense of the term, is the fluid extract of meat or meat and bones, and is of two kinds:—simple and compound.
Simple stock is the extract from a single kind of flesh, fish or fowl. Compound stock is the extract from two or more kinds of flesh, fish or fowl mingled and cooked together, or mixed together, after being cooked separately.
HOW TO MAKE SOUP STOCK.
To make stock, meats of any kind cut in small pieces, or meat and bones well cut and broken, should be put in a pot in cold water slightly salted, and the water heated very gradually until it reaches the boiling point, after which it should be kept simmering gently for a longer or shorter time, according to the nature and quantity of the material used, and the consistency of the stock wanted. When sufficiently cooked, it should be removed from the fire, strained into a jar or bowl, and set in a cool place.