“For an in-depth preliminary study on how waste pieces, bones, hulls and shells in a restaurant kitchen can be used to create an optimal and versatile product based on the criteria of taste, aroma, texture, energy consumption, nutritional value and yield. The results of the study are to be published, and the idea is that the method would be used on a multitude of raw materials.” The jury’s reasoning.
Broth and stocks have for a long time been the basis of many kitchens, both commercial and private. The Stora Kokboken from 1952 contains eleven pages on different broths with recipes for simpler and finer fish broths and vegetable broths as well as mushroom broth. The most space is devoted to variants of the meat broth: dark, light, simple, “regular”, fast, and so on.
What is the status of broth in restaurant kitchens today?
– There is a lot of food based on broths, such as ramen and other Japanese soups. On the other hand, sauce cooking has become significantly less central, says chef and restaurateur Petter Nilsson at restaurant Petri in Stockholm.
Nilsson is trained in cooking broth from all leftovers and thereby minimizing waste, he tells us, adding that taking care of the whole raw material is also respecting it.
– But today you don’t have fish carcasses, veal bones or other meat bones, because the fish and meat come cut, boneless and ready.
Nilsson now intends to find out how to cook the perfect broth based on the various criteria he has set: energy consumption, yield, nutritional value, taste, texture and aroma.
Isn’t it enough to scour old cookbooks to find out how to prepare the best broth?
– There are certainly many recipes where you learn how to make different types of broth, but I don’t think that it is ever clear which broth is actually the best, says Nilsson. This is a study in how best to prepare a broth. Different raw materials have different conditions, so what is most suitable for which raw material? Is there a general method for the preparation? Should different things be added gradually?
Nilsson believes that you will get answers to energy consumption and yield fairly quickly. After that, it will be about finding a golden mean between all the different criteria. He guesses that there will above all be contradictions in the relationship between energy and yield, as well as between yield and sensory quality.
– As a chef, you often receive some form of training in how to cook broths. You inherit a knowledge that regularly needs to be questioned. It’s quite possible that the best thing is to cook the veal stock for three days, but we don’t know.
At the moment, there are four kinds of broths used regularly at restaurant Petri, deriving from game, leftover scallops, crab and vegetables.
Not all broths need to be boiled, Nilsson believes. He ferments the vegetable broth and uses it as a flavoring agent. The recipe consists of celery, root celery, fennel, leek, onion, mushroom, tomato, parsnip, parsley root and carrots, and garlic cloves. He adds fine salt and lets it all ferment at room temperature for 14 days. When the pickled vegetables are ready, he dilutes with water, straining and then storing the vegetable broth in the fridge for two months. After that, the fermented vegetable broth is ready to be used as a flavoring agent.
What do you hope to get out of your prize from Circular Gastronomy?
– I want help to find researchers who are interested in this and also get in touch with laboratories that find it exciting. Then I hope to get help spreading the knowledge.
Nilsson is really looking forward to researching the optimal broth, and he hopes for results that many will benefit from. He sees sharing knowledge as very important.
– The most important question for this study is how we can maximize the output of the food we produce. To be able to use as much as possible of the raw materials and create nutritious food from them. The solution to how we should deal with the supply problem, in my opinion, is not that we should produce more, but better, and with drastically reduced wastage.
Ann-Helen Meyer von Bremen
Photo: Per Anders Jörgensen