Quote:
Originally Posted by Daddy Warbucks
Yeah this is what i couldn't get my head around in the Heston one, how can you skim or in any way review the stock when its pressure cooking. Seems like it would be super cloudy, and the only time i tried, it definitely was. Was then super skeptical when he made the consumme from his frozen stock filtered through muslin (but am going to try now that i have both a pressure cooker and muslin!)
As I haven't seen the vid, there may be something I'm missing, however a couple things to note.
Skimming occurs for the first 30 minutes to and hour with the pressure lid off. At that point it's just a pot (important to note that it should be a very nice pot with a heavy bottom - I have a slightly different version of
this 10 quart Fagor and really like it). So basically you skim for a while until scum stops forming, and then you put the lid on and crank the pressure.
The instructions typically say to build pressure and then turn to low heat to maintain. Now if your ultimate goal is a consomme, this should be fine as stock is just the base, and will ultimately get clarified via raft and skimming techniques. The problem for me came when doing various types of ramen broth, some which I wanted clear.
They also say that pressure cooking can decrease the brightness of flavors, and often times people will season with vinegar post pressure to add some more acidity and brightness.
Again, none of this should deter you from pressure cooking - especially stocks. Short ribs are a pretty good use case as well. While I'm currently doing a 48 hour sous vide short rib (Momofuku) for dinner tomorrow, I've used
my kalbi recipe before to do whole shortribs in a pressure cooker and they came out pretty nice.