a skillet with butter, chicken stock, sugar, and salt, slowly
simmering them so that by the time the vegetables are
cooked through, the stock has reduced and emulsified with
the butter into a shiny, flavorful glaze that coats the
vegetables. It’s a simple technique, but it’s far from
foolproof, particularly in the home kitchen. In a restaurant
on a high-output burner, the stock boils extremely rapidly
and this bubbling action helps it to emulsify with the butter
in the pan quite easily. With lazy bubbling on a home stove,
however, it’s much more difficult to get a stable emulsion.
On top of that, the gelatin in good chicken stock really
helps stabilize the emulsion. Use a thin store-bought stock,
vegetable stock, or plain water, and your emulsion becomes
doubly hard to form. The solution? A bit of “artificial”
thickening: the tiniest bit of cornstarch—½ teaspoon for a
full 4 to 6 servings of vegetables—is enough to easily
stabilize the coating without turning it gloppy or thick.
nandana
(Nandana)
#1