If you’re a foodie, making stock will be a regular part of your cooking repertoire, but making veal stock might not be something you tackle regularly, simply because of the time it takes to execute.
Veal stock is a rich flavoured stock made from veal bones, vegetables and a ham hock with a fresh bouquet garni of seasonal herbs.
The initial cooking takes about 8-10 hours whereby the all the of the above ingredients are literally cooked into oblivion and all their richness and goodness is transpired into the water to make the rich veal stock.
Then, they’re removed and the stock is cooked more to reduce it by at least half so as to produce an even richer and concentrated stock which is used to make such sauces as demi glaze and combined with rich meat juices to make jus.
I have heard of many chef’s who have spent an entire week to make their veal stock, constantly adding to and reducing it till they get something that almost resembles molasses with such a rick and robust flavour that only a tsp is needed to enrich a sauce.
I don’t have a spare week nor the patience for that, but mine did take the best part of 18 hours all up, so I guess that’s a marathon in itself.
Anyway, over to the main reason of this post and that is, what to do with all that leftover meat and vegetables after it’s removed from the stock. Yes it has had quite a bit of the nutrients removed into the stock, along with the majority of the flavour, but, it still tastes good and is far too good to throw out or give to the dog.
Yesterday I decided to make two meat pies from it and they were/are delicious.
All I did was make a basic velouté sauce using beef stock (I had some premade and frozen) and stirred it through he meat leftover.
Then, using frozen puff pastry sheets I lined a pie dish, filled it with the cooled meat in velouté and baked it for 30 minutes on 220°°C
Just divine and so easy.
So, next time you’re making veal stock or beef or lamb stock for that matter, don’t throw the leftovers away, make a pie.
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