Home-made bouillon

Home-made bouillon is usually much tastier than a stock cube dissolved in water and is also the most important component of a delicious soup or sauce.

Making a bouillon doesn’t necessarily have to be time consuming. Once you’ve collected the right ingredients and brought them to the boil, the bouillon can simmer endlessly and the hob does the rest of the work.

There are three types of bouillons:

A vegetable bouillon is usually made from equal quantities of leek, carrot, onion and celery, with added herbs and perhaps some garlic. 

A meat, game or chicken bouillon can be made from soup chicken, scraps of meat, chicken carcasses, bones with added vegetables and fresh herbs.

A fish bouillon is made from fish heads and bones, with added vegetables and fresh herbs. 

Preparation

·        Bring to the boil in cold water

The ingredients are always put into cold water and then brought to the boil. This allows all the flavours to gradually be infused in the water, without the pores of the ingredient immediately being closed by boiling hot water.

·        Skimming off the foam

Once the bouillon has come to the boil, simmer for 10 minutes. In meat, game and chicken bouillon, the protein particles will come to the surface of the water and form a grey foam layer. This foam layer can be skimmed off. 

·        Simmer

It is important to turn down the heat at this point. Induction is ideal for this, because on the lowest setting a bouillon does not come to the boil, but gently simmers. The Fusion Vulcano wok burner also has an inner flame ring with a very low power of 0.2 kW which allows the bouillon to gently simmer.

Take the following cooking times as a guide:

Fish bouillon                                   ½ hour

Vegetable bouillon                       1 hour

Chicken bouillon                2 hours

Meat or game bouillon    4 hours

·        Sieving

You get the clearest result by lining a sieve or cone with a clean, damp tea towel and sieving the bouillon through it. If necessary, season the bouillon again with salt and pepper if you know what you will be using the bouillon for.

By vacuum packing the bouillon in small portions after cooling, you always have a tasty basis for any sauce.