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Aspic: what it is made of and how to cook it properly
20.03.2023 04:30
Updated: 14.04.2023 18:08
On the eve of holidays, housewives like to cook not only the usual salads and potatoes with meat.
Delicious transparent aspic also appears on holiday tables, which is so nice to eat with horseradish or mustard...
But the task of making aspic baffles inexperienced cooks. What is it made of? How long? When to add gelatin?
If the aspic does not set, will you have to start the whole process over again? Let's try to answer all these questions.
Ingredients
Let's start with the selection of ingredients. Aspic is easy to make from any bone broth, because it is a solidified broth with the addition of gelatin.
Take chicken feet, necks, wings if you want to have chicken aspic; for making pork aspic the best option would be pork legs; a mixture of veal and cow tails, to which beef lips or ears are mixed, will also come in handy.
The basis will be any part of the animal or bird carcass that has muscles or joints - they provide the necessary collagen for the hardening of the cooked mass. The meat for the jellied meat can be plucked from the bones, or you can add a little beef brisket, a piece of boneless pork, chicken or turkey fillet, even the meat of wild birds.
How much of what is needed to make the aspic tasty and set without adding gelatin? For four liters of water, usually put at least two kilograms of bones with muscles, skin and joints, and add about 500 grams of pure meat.
What else can you put in the base for making aspic? Vegetables, as in the case when you are preparing a regular broth for soup. Fry onions and carrots to get a tasty frying, add some celery, greens and herbs. Aspic will be tasty if you add allspice, ginger and star anise.
If you like the flavor that bay leaves give to broths, then add this seasoning literally five minutes before the end of cooking the base and immediately remove the leaf from the pan after turning off the stove.
Beginner housewives are worried that the finished broth for jellied meat turns out cloudy, and they look for ways to prevent this. In fact, it is easy to keep both the broth and the jellied meat from it transparent: you need to cook the base after it boils, on the lowest heat. It should not bubble or simmer.
How long does it take to cook future aspic?
Long: minimum five hours, maximum eight. During this time, the collagen from the muscles, bones and joints will turn into liquid and become a natural substitute for store-bought gelatin, helping the mass to harden. And after this time, do not rush to separate the meat from the bones and distribute everything into molds: let the broth cool itself.
When it finally cools down to an acceptable temperature, start to finely chop the meat and grind the harder parts of the joints. The resulting mass can be poured with a small amount of broth mixed with garlic pressed in a press.
Most of the broth should be strained through a towel, poured into a mold to set (after placing the meat in there) and the container should be put in the refrigerator for four to five hours.
The jellied meat prepared according to all the above points will easily harden itself, without any additional additives. But if this does not happen, and the time to serve it is approaching, then you will have to add a little gelatin. How to do this and how much product to add to the jellied meat is indicated on the packaging itself, so you just need to study it carefully.
