Preparing Southern Rocklobster Stocks and Stocks and Consommés

When it comes to preparing stocks or bisques, we have seen many aspects of technique that could do with improvement.

Watching kitchen staff take forever to pass the shell for a bisque.
Staff cooking a stock too long and introducing inedible bitterness to that stock or bisque.
Volume loss when passing shells for stocks.
Flavour loss when using conventional clarification.
Unnecessarily high food costs.

It's these common problems that drive our kitchen to constantly look for better, not just easier methods. The aim is better yields and most of all intense flavour profiles without a hint of chalky bitterness.
We want our stocks to be sweet and succulent.

At Southern Rocklobster Limited our team is constantly working on developing better techniques and sharing that knowledge with the chefs who use our product.

It works the other way around too. We often come across tips and hints in cookbooks written by chefs which approach problems from another angle, and force us to have a "why didn't we think of that?" moment.

We welcome your comments and embrace anything that can improve our information.

Serves dependent on the amount of shell you start with

Ingredients

Carefully rinse the Rocklobster shells, we have found that lobsters that spend longer in the slurry can be salty.
Weigh the shell, lobster juices and tomalley if you are using it.
Prepare half the weight of the shell of peeled white onion, finely chopped.
Keeping them separate, prepare one quarter the weight, peeled and finely chopped carrot.
One fifth of the shell weight celery, no leaves and very finely chopped
50g unsalted butter or EV Olive Oil per 500g shell
1250ml cold water per 500g shell
Whole white pepper
Appropriate fresh herbs and bay leaves

Method


Sauté the onion until it is golden, then add the carrot and continue cooking until it is also caramelised and then add the celery.
Cook genttly, stirring for a further few minutes, and then add the tomato and cook until everything is soft.
Roughly chop up the shell, put it into the Thermomix and add about 250ml (a cup) of the vegetable.
Pulverise the shell in 10 second bursts at speed 10, scraping down the sides until it is very liquid and the shell pieces tiny.

Add the water to the vegetable, scrape the brownings into the stock and then add the pulverised shell.
Turn the heat down very low, and stirring only for the first 30 minutes very slowly bring the stock to a simmer.

NEVER ACTIVELY BOIL THE STOCK

When the scum has come to the surface, turn the heat off and set a timer for one hour. Without stirring the stock up strain through a chinois lined with muslin.

The bottom dirty stock is reserved for rice, bisques, soups and sauces that do not require clarity.