Kitchen Tip: Cooling Soup or Stock

December 19, 2008

If all goes according to my master plan, I’ll be making another batch of chicken stock later today.  My first try was a huge success, and led to some great soups such as vegetable.  One problem that I encountered, however, was cooling the stock.  I don’t have an ice maker and only three trays for cubes, making it difficult to cool the stock in an ice bath as suggested.

I was glancing through an issue of Cook’s Illustrated today and saw a potential solution: stir the stock with a plastic bottle filled with water and frozen.  I serendipitously already have a couple frozen bottles in my freezer, so I’m all set.  This is what it will look like:

Fascinating picture, I know.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try it this afternoon.  I’ll update the post when I have results.

Update:

This technique worked fairly well, but was not amazing.  I did have a lot of stock – probably over a gallon – but I needed a few bottles to get it close to 100º F.  I’ll continue to use this since I have limited ice availability.

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