Jiggly "not bone broth" Stock

The secret to jiggly collagen filled stock

The magic is in ✨the method✨. The most surprising thing about culinary school (and I think going back to school in general) is realizing how little you actually know and how much misinformation is out there. I posted a TikTok about broth and stock last week and was bombarded with comments saying things like, “If you cook your bone broth for 24 hours, that’s how you get the jiggly layer of collagen,” and “If you cook stock longer, it has a higher protein content.” I can’t even fault people for believing these things because up until a week ago, I thought they were true too. (Also, I promise to stfu about broth after this, and I have a mashed potato recipe coming tomorrow, a Broma Bakery collab, and a bachelorette menu coming soon)

But cook time and roasting have nothing to do with protein extraction and collagen, and here is what actually goes into making delicious stock with that THICK layer of collagen.

1. Collagen is located in different parts of the animal. Bones with lots of turns and joints have the most collagen, and big, straight bones have the least. So, for beef: beef knuckles, necks, and backs have the most collagen, and for chicken: feet, necks, and backs have the most. Cooking time has nothing to do with the amount of collagen you’ll get in your stock; it has everything to do with bone type.

2. Cook time does nothing past a certain point in terms of protein and nutrient extraction; at a certain point, it starts degrading things. For chicken you only have to cook it for 2-4 hours, for beef 6-8, and veal 8-12. Past that, if you're cooking it for 24 hours, you’re not getting much more out of it. It’s not really going to hurt it as long as it doesn’t get to boiling, but it’s just driving up your power bill. Why do some people say that cooking it longer raises the protein content and makes it darker? Because they’re just cooking off the water. Protein does not evaporate, nor does color, so if you reduce 2 cups of stock with 20 grams of protein down to 1 cup of stock, technically, it’s going to be darker with a greater protein ratio… but it literally just has less water. It’s not healthier, unless you’re trying to drink less water… If you’re willing to pay more for this at the grocery store do the math on price/gram of protein on two different brands and it’ll probably equal out the same.

3. So how do we get that thick collagen layer and deep color/flavor? We want to start by roasting beef necks for an hour (you can usually get them at an Asian grocer like H-Mart for less than $5/lb). Then we want to start them in cold water and slowlllly bring it to barely a simmer to get the slowest most gentle extraction. Then we want to cook it at a very low temp (never letting it boil) for 6-8 hours, adding aromatic vegetables at the last hour so as not to torch their flavor.

WARNING: This method works so well sometimes that if you want a drinkable beverage, you might get straight collagen instead.