Weekend veal stock/essence

Saturday afternoon I converted 2 kg of veal breast into primary stock following the recipe in Kamman. Since my big stock pot is pretty old and no longer perfectly flat on the bottom (not good on the ceramic cooktop), I did the long cooking by putting the pot in oven (at 150C). This seemed to work pretty well.

I strained the stock and let it cool overnight, then defatted it on Sunday morning.

I converted 3l of the defatted stock into "essence" by browning another couple hundred grams of veal, adding the stock, and letting it reduce down to about 500ml. I fished the veal pieces out after about 1.5 hours (we had them for lunch). The strained reduction went into the fridge to cool and separate. After a couple more hours I defatted the essence, divided it into three portions, and froze them.

This week I'll do something with the stock and then give the essence a try next week. It tastes great, so I can't wait to use it.

This whole process was time consuming, but didn't require particularly much work on my part. The sticking point, of course, is the cost of the raw materials : this is a project only to be done with veal is on sale.