Grow Your Own Herbs and Veggies all Year Round!
This technique applies to sauce and soup making. ‘Reducing,’ if you remember, is the technique where you cook off the water content of a liquid (stock, sauce, or soup) so that the nutrients and flavors become more concentrated. This can, however, be costly because you lessen the volume of your soup or sauce, the more your reduce it. So, in order to make a liquid seem more concentrated, one could thicken it using various different starches: potatoes, flour, corn starch, rice, rice flour, etc. Throwing starch into the pot of simmering liquid will make the liquid lumpy--the starch won’t be properly diffused in the liquid--so it’s best to mix a small amount of the starch with liquid or fat: water, butter, oil, duck fat. Using a small bowl, mix the starch with the fat or liquid, half and half. Mix it thoroughly with your fingers as your liquid (stock or soup) simmers in the pot. Then, drizzle the thickener into the pot as you whisk the liquid. Keep stirring and allow the liquid to thicken. Potato is a healthier alternative to the various flour starches. Using your grater, grate the potato into a white paste. Whisk the paste into the simmering liquid and allow it to thicken.
World Class Prosciutto and Country Hams from Johnson County Hams
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