All Things Chill

One of the most crucial parts of cooking stock is cooling it down for storage. I’ve written on how to store it, but how do you get a piping hot pot of delicious liquid gold into your freezer safely?

I’ll give it to you straight. Food that sits for a long amount of time between 40 degrees to 140 degrees is subject to the development of toxins and bacteria. Stock is very susceptible to this, so you must bring it down below 40 degrees in a quick amount of time for safe storage.

The quickest way to cool something down is to surround it with ice and water in a larger pot. Most people use use their biggest pot for stock. To that point, I’d recommend reducing the stock by 1/2 into a more concentrated liquid (your stock will taste more concentrated too!). Also, ice wands used to stir the liquid itself. Yes, ice wands. What’s an ice wand? Easy: bottles of frozen water (with a little bit poured out so it doesn’t explode in the freezer). It’s best to cool something from both outside and in. Makes sense?

I hope so!

~Spec

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Cooking Culture, Cuisine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.