Learning Outcome

I had something go quite wrong for me today in the kitchen. I managed to fry all the water out of a braising liquid. At least, I think that is what is happened. I was braising short ribs, and the stock I was using had too much fat in it. As the sauce sat on the stove, the fat essentially cooked the water out of the broth, leaving a burnt roux floating in the oil, and a very greasy taste to the ribs.
I've had this happen with butter sauces, but that is really just a broken emulsion, and can be fixed, sort of. In this case, though, there was just nothing left to work with. My partner and I tried to patch it up a little, but it was hopeless.

There are two morals to this little incident. The first, and obvious one, is temperature control, temperature control, temperature control. Had we not let the heat get so high, the fat wouldn't have evaporated out of the broth. That this happened at all is simply stupidity on my part. I know better.

The second moral, though, is more important. A few months back one of my chef instructors related an anecdote about a time when he was catering a large event. About halfway through the plating he came to suspect that he didn't have enough of a certain side dish. He rode it out, ran out of the side before he ran out of guests, and got chewed out by his Executive Chef. The lesson being that the time to act is when you first start to worry, and not to wait until your worry is proven out.

How does this relate to me? Well, about a half hour before we needed to plate, I tasted the sauce. It was...greasy. No real flavor, weird unctuousness, colorless, no knappe. All the signs of a broken sauce were there, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t think I had the time to sort it out. I should have taken the time. There was enough time left before service where I could have thrown together another roux and added some demi glace. I wouldn’t have had time to caramelize anymore mirepoix, but that would have been better than serving dry short ribs – or worse, short ribs with a drizzle of oil over them – which ended up being my only two options.

So, while today’s dish was a failure, I’ve decided to look at this as a learning outcome. Next time I get even the slightest suspicion that something is amiss, I’m going to stop what I’m doing and fix the problem right then. I should have known to do that, but sometimes I’m a little dense, and need to get swatted across the back of the head before I internalize a lesson.