we’ll collectively call by their scientific name, “gunk”) that
make broth cloudy. If you keep a stock at a bare simmer,
the fat rises to the surface in distinct bubbles that can be
carefully skimmed off as it cooks, and the proteins
coagulate into relatively large agglomerations that can be
strained out.
But let your broth simmer vigorously, or—mon dieu,
non!–actually come to a boil, and that gunk gets dispersed
into millions of tiny droplets that simply can’t be completely
removed from the broth. It can spell disaster in a fancy
restaurant, where sauces and soups must be perfectly glossy
and crystal clear, but do we really care about that at home?
I, for one, will take flavor over appearance any day of the
week, and fat is flavor.
A bonus to grinding up the chicken bones and scraps
before making stock is that all the ground-up bits form a sort
of floating raft that will collect stray proteins, minerals, and