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Recipe of the Week: Kolbasz Consommé
By
Danielle Sucher
Published Mar 26, 2008
Modified Mar 26, 2008
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By
Danielle Sucher
Published Mar 26, 2008
Modified Mar 26, 2008
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The New York Times had an article on gelatin clarification last fall, The Essence of Nearly Anything, Drop by Limpid Drop by Harold McGee. The idea is that you can create a perfectly clear broth that tastes like anything – chocolate, ranch dressing, brown butter, whatever you like. All you need is enough fridge and freezer space to set up a gelatin clarification system.
McGee explained the basic technique very well: Create your broth by simmering ingredients in water on the stove, then turn it into jello by letting gelatin bloom in a cup of cooler liquid which you then blend back into the hot liquid. Freeze the broth, then set it up in your fridge in a cheesecloth-lined colander set over a bowl. Over the next few days, clear broth will drip down into the bowl, and a strange jelly filter will remain in the colander up above.
McGee gives you a sample recipe, with measurements by volume, but that's imprecise. If you want to take more care to have identical results every time, it helps to have a precise formula; try clarifying your stocks with .7% gelatin by weight. For example, if your strained broth weighs 100 grams, add .7 grams of gelatin to create the gelatin filter.
The broth shown above is a kolbasz consommé, made with a mix of Hungarian sausage (csabai and cserkesz kolbasz). Full instructions after the jump.
About 3/4 lb of sausage were sliced into thin rounds and fried a bit to partially cook. 4 quarts of water were added, and it all simmered for a few hours. In the end, the sausage and water were pureed together in a blender and strained through a fairly fine-mesh strainer before the resulting liquid was clarified with .7% gelatin as explained above.
In the end, it became a clear broth that tasted precisely like Hungarian sausage, which is delicious sipped by itself or used as a cooking medium or base for sauces.
Tagged
broth
clarification
filtration
gelatin
Hungarian sausage
recipe
soup
Danielle Sucher
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