Difference between broth and stock?!
How does one make a broth? Is this just poaching liquid? When would you use broth instead of stock?
Answers:
I think it depends on what you mean by broth. In my understanding, the history of stocks is like this:
In the past, they used meat to make stocks. They used meat to make a "first stock" from water, and then they used another chunk of meat to make a proper "stock" using the "first stock". Since you need to use a lot of meat to make stock, only rich people could uses stocks in cooking. The used meat was eaten by servants in the house. The stock made in this way has less amount of gelatin, that is why they needed to use flour to thicken a sauce.
In the book, Le Guide Culinaire, Auguste Escoffier tells us to make the "first stock" with bones; then use meat to finish making the stock. This contains more gelatin from the bones, so if you reduce it down, it becomes glace. In more modern cooking, we often finish our sauces just by whisking butter in. This is possible because we use bones. Also, by utilizing bones, which are much cheaper than meat, one could reduce the cost in cooking.
You said you wanted to make a broth and also asked what a broth is. I almost never use the term broth myself. Instead, I say a thick stock or a thin stock. I'm inclined to think that people use the words stock and broth to mean what are called fond and bouillon in French, respectively.
In any case, I do not see any fundamental difference between the two except for their thickness. We usually use "fond" to make a sauce, and "bouillon" to make a soup. One can even say, bouillon is a thin fond.
The important thing is that you know what you are doing when you cook. Broth or stock, it doesn't really matter. You stock is different from my stock after all. Just always make stock/bouillon as clear and flavorful as possible.
broth is usually the juice you get from the stock, regardless of what you use for stock. if you boil chicken then you would have chicken broth. you can make a decent broth for onion soup for instance by adding soy sauce to water and then put in some onion flakes. viola onion soup i have served this in more then one rest. and never had a complaint. soy is great
Stock contains bones and seasonings. Broth contains actual meat and seasonings (no bones).
Salt.
