Stock Scum or Chicken Foam

We had a lively debate over at http://lowcarber.org about the properties of the scum floating on top of stock and whether it really needs to be skimmed. I bravely volunteered to taste the scum during my next stock making, which happened to be the poaching liquid for yesterday's Succulent Chinese chicken. There were predictions it would taste off, bitter, pollute the soup with nasty flavors. I was concerned that it was perhaps a lot of nutrition being skimmed off.

At any rate, I skimmed it off dutifully and tasted it. Pardon the cliche but it tasted like chicken. No off flavors that I could detect however I'm not a super-taster. I am also not someone who is so revolted by the looks of something it translates into how I taste it (generally). To me, ugly food can taste good. I think I get this from my Mom through early childhood training. Our food was rarely pretty or especially appetizing to look at. Sometimes it was pretty awful looking and on occasion, it tasted pretty awful too. Mom was an experimental cook, as I am, but during a time when people first started experimenting with soy and stuff like that. I'll never forget those awful green soy/cashew burgers she made once.

The stock scum forms really early in the stock making process, like before a boil even starts so I doubt that it involves marrow and good stuff. It's just proteins that decide to clump together. Probably in the same way that beach scum forms. Perhaps it is the precursor to life! Amino acids bumping into one another, one day forming a simple organism.

At any rate the scum didn't taste off at all. No bitterness, no nastiness, just good old chicken flavor bundled into an unappealing looking gray, floating scum. Or I guess if we want to be more gracious we could call it "chicken foam".

So, if you're not overly concerned about the look of your stock, don't skim.

Bird Fat

I am unafraid of animal fats. Why? Well, for one they don't really cause any lipid issues on a low carb diet. In fact, they raise the amount of good cholesterol. For another, I don't really buy into the whole lipid hypothesis of heart disease, in it's present form. Read Gary Taubes "Good Calories, Bad Calories" if you want a good overview of the source of my skepticism. This topic has become dogmatic though. Many people have invested their careers, reputations and fortunes in promoting the idea that fat is bad or animal proteins are harmful to humans. Arguing with them is like trying to use science to prove God does or does not exist. It just doesn't work. But everyone is free to choose their phat philosophy. And my philosophy is that fatliness is next to godliness.

I absolutely love duck and goose fat and I cook those birds just to rob them of their fat. It is great tasting fat. Veggies cooked in it are just amazing tasting. Also these birds eat a lot of grasses and probably insects, both are great sources of omega-3 fatty acids, so it wouldn't surprise me if duck and goose are higher in those fatty acids. But outside of my suspicion they're very healthful forms of fat, I think they're vastly delicious.

Do yourself a favor, roast a duck or goose and save its fat for cooking!

Here's a recipe that should get you started, I use this method and it works great. I skim the fat from the pan and save it.

Crisp Roast Duck Recipe

Steak Tutorial

I was steak cooking newbie but found some good tips online and finally made a little tutorial about how Nancy Does Steak!

Step 1:
Preheat a cast-iron skillet on high heat for a few minutes. Don't need to add any oil or anything. Turn the oven onto 375.

Step 2:
Prepare the steak. I "butter" my steak with goose fat (see ingredients picture below) and then use coarse kosher salt and cracked pepper, and plenty of both. The reason kosher salt is necessary is that it has big spikey crystals that will stick to the meat better than table or sea salt and that helps the meat form a crust (according to Alton Brown). If you don't have goose fat you could use another fat with a high smoke point like peanut oil. Don't use butter though, it burns easily.
(Look at all that goose fat! I had that whole container totally full from cooking one goose.)

Step 3:
Plop your "buttered" steak into the pan and let it sear on each side for 2-3 minutes. On this steak I went for 3 minutes. Turn on your vent fans, open your windows! You might want to use a splatter screen if you used a lot of fat.

Step 4:
Turn it over to the other side and sear it. About the time you're done searing your oven should be up to temperature (at least mine is).

Step 5:
Lift the pan off the stove-top (use a pot holder, it is HOT!) and put it into the oven.


How long to cook? It seems to depend on the thickness of the meat and the size of the steak. This one was 9 minutes to be pretty rare. You can learn to judge the doneness by poking the steak with a finger. If it feels mushy and soft, it is very rare. The firmer it is, the more done it is. I often like leaving it a little rarer because I eat half of the steak, next day I re-heat the leftovers and put it on a big green salad and I don't want it overcooked from the reheat.

Step 6:
Let the steak rest for 3 minutes and tip the platter so the juices run off. You want that "crust" you made while searing to stay as crunchy as possible. I'd suggest using a bigger plate than I did.

Optional Step 7:
Throw something like spinach or another vegetable in the pan and use the left over heat to cook it. You'll get vegetable mixed with yummy fat, salt and pepper with that lovely steak flavoring.




Step 8:
Enjoy! There's a side of avocado with mayonnaise if you're wondering about that green/white blob.

Everything I know about cooking steak came from these two sources:


Guide to cooking perfect steak
Alton Brown's steak method (video)

Limited food selections but not bored

I don't get bored on a limited selection of food, or at least on the set of foods I currently eat. I have a suspicion that what people usually identify as boredom really isn't boredom. At least that was true for me. I get a kind of restlessness sometimes where I will want something I can't have, like salted nuts or peanut butter or worse.

I know I have plenty of foods I like, but they're not the foods I'm presently craving. If you asked me previously to identify what the source of my discontent is, I'd say "I'm bored with these foods". But on further reflection, I know that isn't right. I love the foods I have available to eat and at meal times I eat them happily. But I'm hungry and hunger is good sauce. Everything tastes wonderful, I'm fully satisfied and contented after a meal and food is far from my mind. Absolutely no boredom with mealtimes.

But come the snacking hour (between bed time and dinner time) that restlessness sends me scurrying to the pantry looking for forbidden eats. That is not boredom... it is cravings.

I think really people normally eat very limited diets. But they're not aware of the limitations so they don't pay them any mind. However when they go on a diet, they're suddenly quite aware of their new limitations and mentally that makes them uncomfortable and they look for escape clauses.

I've given up foods for 2 reasons. One is that some make me ill like gluten, chocolate, nuts, seeds (*cry*) and dairy. The other list is ones that make me fat. The fat ones seem to set off binges so bringing them back "in moderation" just isn't going to happen.