aspic. there’s a reason no one makes it anymore.
Hey kids!
I’m still on vacation, but here is a dooooozie for ya.
Jayne. As in, Jayne, The Barefoot Kitchen Witch.
I met Jayne on our trip up north. Yes, I know what she looks like, and, no, I’m not telling. She’s done a marvelous job of keeping herself well hidden! She’s so funny, so dedicated – and such a real kitchen she has!! I have pegboard envy, I do!!
I’d like to tell you that you are going to run right out and make her upcoming recipe, but well, ummm…let me just say it now.
Jayne? I told you so.
And now, I give you our guest blogger. Enjoy!! Thanks Jayne!
Attempting Aspic
Last week, in a moment of apparent weakness or desperation, Susan asked if I’d write a guest post for her this week. I asked if she’d been feverish lately, and when she said no, really, she was fine, she really was, I agreed to do it. I asked if there was anything in particular she’d like me to write about, and she said – and I quote – “Write about anything.”
Ohhh, Susan, you are regretting those words now, I’m sure.
For those of you who have no idea who I am – and no, I’m not a wacky relative taking advantage of blogging nepotism – I’m Jayne, and my main blog is Barefoot Kitchen Witch. Like Susan, I write about food and my family, among other things, I’m a member of Tuesdays with Dorie, and unknown to Susan, I have an evil streak a mile wide.
Not long ago, Susan wrote a post about making creme brulee, and said some pretty harsh things about flan (“congealed old milk”), and so initially I wanted to do a post about flan. Just ‘cuz. But I thought that would be kind of silly, since she’d just written about creme brulee and I had already recently written about flan. Enough with the egg custard stuff. She’d also mentioned, in the same paragraph of this post I’m talking about, that the only thing more hideous than flan would be aspic. “Aspic is like a big, fat mistake….Who thinks of crap like that?”
And it is for that reason that I decided to try my hand at making aspic.
Now, to make an aspic you need some sort of stock, to begin with. Beef, fish, chicken, pork, vegetable, or veal. Different animals’ bones produce different amounts of gelatin, so it’s sometimes necessary to add additional gelatin to create a successful aspic. Veal, I’ve read, provides a lot of gelatin, but I don’t happen to have any. I have a few varieties of chicken stock, some fish stock, clam broth, and crab stock, at the moment. Oh, and beef stock, too. I really should keep a list.
Anyway, I decided to go with the crab stock. It’s very flavorful stuff, because when we cooked the crabs that produced this stock, we used all sorts of seasonings, including some Old Bay. And as far as what to put IN the aspic (because what’s the point of aspic if you can’t suspend stuff in it?), I went with shrimp and vegetables, because, again, that’s what I’ve got on hand.
So, first thing – how do you make aspic? I purposely avoided Julia Child’s books, because, well, I was being lazy, and her recipes are so detailed you need a GPS to follow them. I googled “aspic recipe” and found one on AllSands.com. I haven’t tested this recipe, and in fact, as I type this, I haven’t even finished making my aspic – it’s chilling in the fridge. So I won’t even have an opinion about it until I’ve taken a picture of the final product. Exciting, huh?
4 cups of well-seasoned stock – check!
2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin – check!
3 room temperature egg whites – check!
I thawed two 2-cup bags of crab stock in separate pots, and then, even though it doesn’t say to at this stage of the game in the recipe, I strained the liquid, just in case any teeny tiny crab bits remained from when I froze it.
While the gelatin bloomed, I separated my eggs and set the yolks aside for something else. (Maybe a flan…) Then I whisked the whites until they were frothy, as directed, and whisked the whites in with the other 2-cup portion of the stock.
By the way – and off topic a bit – I’ve been seeing this commercial on TV for an egg-cracking contraption, and I’m just curious, does anyone out there own one of these? The way the commercial plays, you’d think we’re all a bunch of incompetent ninnies with regard to egg crackage. My five-year-old daughter can successfully crack and even separate eggs with less angst than the miserable folks in this commercial. I have not once had to pick shell out of anything I’ve cooked. Why do these commercials have to tell us we’re helpless? It’s just an egg! Do we really need one more gadget? Hands work just fine! Really!
Egg whites, incidentally, are also used for this purpose sometimes in beer and wine making. Just thought I’d share that.
Anyway, you want to boil the stock mixture until, according to the recipe, “a dense foam appears.” This foam is the egg whites and the proteins. At this point you remove the stock from the stove and let it cool. The foam will stay foamy – it won’t dissolve back into the liquid – yay! And when it’s cooled (but not too cool, because you don’t want the gelatin to set up yet) you strain it to get rid of those ucky proteins once and for all. I used a very fine mesh strainer and a tight-weave cotton tea towel that I dampened first. I think that’s sort of what the article means by “cup towel.”
And just to keep this as up to the minute as possible, I just took my cooling stock out of the fridge, and sure enough, the foam is all huddled together in a big frothy mass, and the rest of the stock looks pretty clear. I’m going to strain it now – I’ll be right back.
~~~
I’m back. I actually let the stock get too cold – it started to set, so I’m warming it just for a moment on the stove, just enough so I can strain it. I am notorious for trying to multitask too many things at a time, and this is what happens. My aspic starts to set. Will I ever learn?
I got out 5 ramekins and brushed the bottoms of them lightly with oil. Then I ladled a little of the aspic into the ramekins and put them in the fridge to set. Twenty minutes later, I added two pieces of cooked shrimp arranged in the shape of a heart and some tiny bits of roasted red pepper, cut in heart shaped pieces, as garnish. A bit more aspic, then back into the fridge. One more addition of roasted red pepper and the last of the aspic, and back into the fridge until serving time.
My first victim was Alex. I’d dropped Julia off at a birthday party, and Bill had a faculty meeting, so it was just the two of us. I took one ramekin from the fridge, ran a knife around the edge of the aspic and warmed the ramekin in some hot water for a minute or so. Then I inverted a plate on the ramekin and flipped it over. I lifted the ramekin gingerly, hoping it would come out okay, and tilted it slightly, because that seems to help in situations like this.
Moments later, my shrimp in aspic slid out onto the plate, minus the first layer of aspic, which slid right off the shrimp and onto the side of the plate with a cloudy, gelatinous shiver. No matter, it still looked pretty enough without that layer, so I tossed that into the sink and proceeded with my garnishing. I took a few pictures, and then I summoned the boy.
“Alex!” I called. “Come here and try this!”
I did my best to sound enthusiastic. It would have helped if I had a plate of chocolate chip cookies instead of the aspic, but hey, life’s tough, kid. Sometimes you have to eat a little aspic.
Well, sometimes you do. And sometimes, you will do anything within your power NOT to eat it. Which is what my handsome little son did. He ran. He ducked. He sidestepped. He laughed at my offer to pay him a dollar if he had a taste, saying “I have plenty of dollars, Mom, I don’t need it.” I begged. I cajoled. I pleaded. All to no avail.
“But, Alex,” I said, ridiculously hopeful, “this is for my website (I meant Susan’s, but that would have taken too much explaining) – I have to let people know what you think!”
“Tell them I think I don’t want to try it,” he told me.
“You like jello, right?” I said brightly.
“No.” he said.
“Well, this is better!” I’m so lame.
Finally, by wearing him down, or appealing to his sense of pity, I got Alex to agree to one itsy bitsy little taste. He said he would touch a bit of the aspic with his tongue. I held out the spoon, which contained a bit of shrimp and a bit of aspic, and he – brave soul – touched the aspic portion with about a square half milimeter’s worth of his filiform papilae (the bumps on the tongue). And then he made a horrible face and ran from the room in a terror-stricken, zig-zag pattern.
Duly noted.
Bill arrived home a little later, after Alex had recovered. I switched back to my happy homemaker persona and asked “Care for some shrimp in aspic?” He looked at me dubiously, then looked cautiously around the room as thought the shrimp in aspic were hiding in the cupboards, ready to jump out at him. “Ohhhhkaaaaayyyy….” he agreed. I quickly plated up another of my concoctions – this time that first layer of aspic stayed put – and handed him a spoon.
He looked at the cloudy blob and looked at me with an expression very similar to Alex’s look earlier. Then, bravely, because he has taken that “for better or for worse” part seriously all these years, he spooned up one of the shrimp, greyish aspic clinging to it, and put it in his mouth.
Then he spun around and ran to the garbage can and…well…eliminated the aspic as best he could.
“That’s F***ing horrible!” he said. “I don’t think I ever want to eat that again.”
Two down.
I had hopes for Julia. She eats fish eyes, after all. Granted, seven o’clock in the morning isn’t optimum aspic-eating time, but fortunately she doesn’t care about stuff like that. I unmolded yet another of my concoctions and told her what it was. She was worried more about the little bits of red pepper. “Are they spicy?” “Oh, no! They’re the sweet kind.” I asked if she wanted to try a bite of the shrimp first. She nodded, and added “Just a little bite.” No problem. With the spoon, I cut one off about a third of one of the shrimp and scooped up a bit of the aspic. She ate that without a hitch, and then, when I asked her how it was…
She nodded, and gave it two thumbs up.
No, really, she did. Honest.
And then, when I asked her if she wanted the rest, she nodded and then…her head changed direction…and she was shaking it from side to side. “Mom,” she said sadly. “I hate to tell you this…but…I don’t like it.”
Okay. I surrender. Aspic was a big FAIL in our house. I don’t even know if I liked it or not. I think I wanted to like it…and I was pleased that I was kind of successful, though the aspic isn’t as clear as it should be. I liked my little two shrimp in the shape of a heart design, and the little tiny roasted red pepper hearts.
But.
Okay, unless someone actually hires me to do so, I won’t be making this again. Probably. Although there is a part of me that really wants to get it PERFECT, just once. Even if that perfectly clear aspic ends up in the trash. Or on the stove – the flavor wasn’t horrible…it was our own crab stock, after all. It was just…well, it was very weird to eat very cold crab stock, but it might taste better as a hot soup. But then..it wouldn’t be an aspic.
Okay, Susan. With regard to aspic, you win.
I should have done the flan post.
January 26, 2014 @ 1:51 pm
Am I the only person in the world that loves aspic?! A very soft boiled egg floating in aspic, yum! I guess I learned to eat this when I lived in Paris and had very little money, everything tastes good when you’re hungry…….:) Dianna
February 21, 2023 @ 7:57 am
Aspic is the best bit for sure, but don’t put egg in it! I am always so disappointed store bought pate comes without aspic now
February 5, 2014 @ 4:26 am
Well, I found this site while searching for a new source to buy aspic from, so I stopped and read your post. I’m a chef, a professional chef, and I was fortunate enough to have been taught in a formal program in a huge hotel kitchen by chefs from Europe. We had stock pots going every day – that gets more and more unusual these days. Aspic is just the gelatin from bones of an animal – a cow, a lamb, or a chicken. That’s it. If you made a beautiful stock for soup, browned the bones, used a mirepoix (carrots, celery, onions), herbs, and let it simmer until done, cool it, refrigerate it overnight, in the morning there would be a layer of aspic. You can buy gelatin, mix it with stock, and make your own ‘aspic’, as Jayne did, but it won’t taste as wonderful. It is great in soup, and adds body to the soup. The egg white is called a ‘clearmeat’ and the foam is a congealed mess of impurities called a ‘raft’. That is how you make consomme’, except you mix the egg white with ground meat, and that will draw all impurities to the top of the pot to form the raft. I love aspic as a garnish for pate. I love to make really fancy pate’ en croute (in crust), and after baking, the pate has shrunk and there is space inside the crust for something besides air. I usually have made decorative holes at the top with small aluminum foil funnels to mark the spot to pour the warm aspic. Then cool, and you have a beautiful and clear addition to your pate, that, when you slice it, is gorgeous. You can even add small , cooked till soft diced vegetables to the aspic, and it is even more elegant. I enjoyed your post on aspic, Jayne. Nice!
June 2, 2014 @ 8:27 pm
Just like Kerri Buckley (above) I stumbled into this blog while searching for Aspic recipes. I do like aspic probably because I am french and have fond memories of pate and pressed meat from my youth in the 50’s. From what I remember the typical aspic was very stiff and clear golden gel. It should taste good if made from good ingredients and stock.
June 2, 2014 @ 8:27 pm
Just like Kerri Buckley (above) I stumbled into this blog while searching for Aspic recipes. I do like aspic probably because I am french and have fond memories of pate and pressed meat from my youth in the 50’s. From what I remember the typical aspic was very stiff and clear golden gel. It should taste good if made from good ingredients and stock.
June 30, 2014 @ 4:26 am
Do you understand the procedure for making consomme? You don’t boil the stock; that, in fact, breaks up the albumin as it starts to denaturize and you end up putting more protein clusters into the stock than you take out. This boiling your recipe called for not only contributed to your gelatin’s cloudiness, but the egg throughout would have “murked” the flavour too. A savoury gelatin should taste just as nice cold as the stock does warm. You want a well beaten egg white, but it doesn’t need to be super foamy. The above commenter, Kerri Buckley, noted that clearmeats often contain a little ground meat (complimentary to your stock of course, i.e. you probably won’t make a fish stock then use beef in your clearmeat), and usually a brunoise mire poix which adds a little extra flavour to your stock, and structural content to your raft, but is not entirely necessary. If you do combine meat and mire poix with your whites, the mixture should still have a enough liquid consistency to pour and whisk without plopping and clumping. Your stock should come to a boil, -for hygienic reasons-, then allowed to reduce in heat before you whisk in your clearmeat, and stay hot, but not even be at a simmer; you don’t want that liquid turn over too much and shatter bits off your raft. Depending on how big a pot you’re clarifying, 15-30 min should be enough time for your raft to set. You may wish to let the stock cool at least a bit to make for safer removal; the raft is still rather delicate, and sometimes warrants sticking your fingers in the pot to help lift it out. I worked for a chef who could pull out an intact raft with a pair of flat skimmers with seemingly amazing dexterity and ease; I, however, always ended up breaking mine, and had a few bits left floating about. A sieve and a bit of cheesecloth takes care of that, but pour gently; you don’t want the force of the falling stock disintegrating the bits, pushing them through the sieve, and back into your stock. Now, if your stock requires it, prepare the gelatin to add. I would suggest you not give up on aspic because you made a bad one the first time out. Never mistake it as a main dish for a meal, but its delightful varieties can be a lovely entremet, or a refreshing accompaniment to summer fare.
June 30, 2014 @ 4:26 am
Do you understand the procedure for making consomme? You don’t boil the stock; that, in fact, breaks up the albumin as it starts to denaturize and you end up putting more protein clusters into the stock than you take out. This boiling your recipe called for not only contributed to your gelatin’s cloudiness, but the egg throughout would have “murked” the flavour too. A savoury gelatin should taste just as nice cold as the stock does warm. You want a well beaten egg white, but it doesn’t need to be super foamy. The above commenter, Kerri Buckley, noted that clearmeats often contain a little ground meat (complimentary to your stock of course, i.e. you probably won’t make a fish stock then use beef in your clearmeat), and usually a brunoise mire poix which adds a little extra flavour to your stock, and structural content to your raft, but is not entirely necessary. If you do combine meat and mire poix with your whites, the mixture should still have a enough liquid consistency to pour and whisk without plopping and clumping. Your stock should come to a boil, -for hygienic reasons-, then allowed to reduce in heat before you whisk in your clearmeat, and stay hot, but not even be at a simmer; you don’t want that liquid turn over too much and shatter bits off your raft. Depending on how big a pot you’re clarifying, 15-30 min should be enough time for your raft to set. You may wish to let the stock cool at least a bit to make for safer removal; the raft is still rather delicate, and sometimes warrants sticking your fingers in the pot to help lift it out. I worked for a chef who could pull out an intact raft with a pair of flat skimmers with seemingly amazing dexterity and ease; I, however, always ended up breaking mine, and had a few bits left floating about. A sieve and a bit of cheesecloth takes care of that, but pour gently; you don’t want the force of the falling stock disintegrating the bits, pushing them through the sieve, and back into your stock. Now, if your stock requires it, prepare the gelatin to add. I would suggest you not give up on aspic because you made a bad one the first time out. Never mistake it as a main dish for a meal, but its delightful varieties can be a lovely entremet, or a refreshing accompaniment to summer fare.
May 19, 2023 @ 10:28 pm
I was also after aspic when I came upon this post. I love Chinese soup dumplings – you bite into them and suck the soup out. I never figured out how they got the soup in. Turns out, they don’t. They put in aspic, which melts when the dumpling is steamed. Utterly delicious.
August 16, 2023 @ 3:30 pm
Next time keep it simple. No crab stock. No add-ins. Bloom a packet and a half of gelatin. Stir it into a cup of beef broth, a pint to three cups of tomato juice, and such seasonings as you like. I like a bit of lemon juice and some Worcestershire. Heat barely to a boil. Stir a minute or two. Pour into lightly oiled molds. Chill until firm. Serve with cottage cheese.