There are dishes that are not influenced by fashion trends or crisis. These dishes include brawn.
Despite the rich assortment of overseas and domestic delicacies, many hostesses prefer jelly. There are several reasons for this:
- Those parts of the animal’s carcass that are not suitable for preparing another dish go to jelly: tails, legs, ears, lips, and lips. It is this malfunction that has excellent gelling properties, and when properly prepared it quickly hardens.
- Due to the low cost, cooking jelly is available to almost everyone.
- Chill - a dish not only satisfying, but also healthy. The fact is that the frozen broth (jelly) - in fact, the same collagen, which is so necessary for bones and joints. Especially if gelatin is added to the jelly.
There is nothing difficult in preparing jelly. The main thing is to have patience and free time, as the meat for jelly is cooked for several hours.
But still sometimes the brawn cooked, it would seem, by all the rules, does not freeze. Of course, this is unpleasant, but quite fixable. To understand why this is happening, get acquainted with the recommendations that need to be taken into account when cooking aspic.
- For jelly, take only the intended parts of the carcass - failure. Good gelatin is obtained from pork and beef legs, chicken legs (not to be confused with shins), heads.
- If you add first-class meat to cold jelly, it should not be much, as it does not freeze on its own.
- Meat on the bone, malfunction, the veins should be boiled in a small amount of broth: the liquid should only slightly cover the contents of the pan.
- Cook the meat for at least 4-5 hours. Chicken legs and neck can be cooked for about three hours. Approximately two hours after the start of boiling, add salt.
- While cooking meat, you should never add water! So that the broth does not boil away, the fire under the pan should be minimal, and the liquid should barely sway. The fact is that with the addition of water, the concentration of gelatin is reduced, and such jelly will not harden.
- Well-cooked meat is practically itself separated from the bone. Remove the meat products from the broth, fold into a plate, and put the bones back in the pan. It is at this time you can put onions, carrots, peppers. Boil bones continue for another 2 hours.
- In order to exclude the ingestion of jelly in the bone marrow, you must strain the finished broth.
- While the bones are steaming, cut the still warm meat, carefully inspecting each piece for the presence of small bones. As you understand, they should not be in cold meat.
- Check the ability of the broth to gelation in a simple way: pour a small amount in a saucer, put it in the refrigerator. If after some time the liquid turns into a sticky mass, the cooking can be considered complete. By the way, chopping the meat, you can also see if the brawn is frozen. The pulp that starts to harden becomes so sticky that it sticks to the fingers.
- Spread the meat in tins or trays, add garlic, greens, onions (optional), cover with warm broth, put in the refrigerator. It usually takes a few hours to turn the broth into a dense jelly.
- To make the jelly more resistant to the effects of room temperature, it is prepared with the addition of gelatin (this will be discussed below).
Sometimes misfortune awaits the hostess: brawn, which has been prepared for more than one hour, has remained in a state of semi-liquid mass even after cooling. What then can be done? First, do not panic, because everything is fixable. Secondly, proceed to the "salvation" dishes.
How to fix jelly, not frozen in the cold
Method One
If the broth is not frozen in cold meat, it means that there is little gelling substance in it. Regular gelatin will help to fill it.
- Pour it in a glass jar or glass, fill it with lukewarm water, following the instructions on the package. Typically, 20 g of gelatin (or one pack) is enough for 2-3 glasses of liquid (this is both broth and water to dissolve the gelatin).
- Leave the gelatin mixture to swell. Instant gelatin is filled with hot water. But, as practice shows, water should not be too hot, otherwise lumps form, which are difficult to dissolve.
- Put the failed jelly in the pan, put on the fire, warm it well.
- Drain the liquid in a separate dish, then strain it through cheesecloth.
- Heat the swollen gelatin in a water bath or in a microwave until hot, stir, strain through a strainer.
- Mix with hot broth, if necessary, add salt and pepper.
- Spread the meat in molds, cover with broth. Put warm jelly in the fridge for freezing.
Method Two
Aspic can not freeze due to the fact that the meat is not cooked long enough.
If you have free time, go back to the store, buy chicken legs, wings or necks - those parts of the chicken carcass that, after long cooking, give a good jelly. You can also use the soup set, which is also enough bones.
- Boil chicken meat in a small amount of broth, adding spices and salt to taste.
- Separate the pulp from the bones, strain the broth.
- Put the uncooked brawn in the pot, put on the fire. When the jelly-like mass turns into broth, pour it into another bowl, cool to a warm state, strain.
- Mix both types of meat, lay in molds. New and old stock combine. Pour them meat. Put in the fridge.
Tip: If you still have broth after cooking meat for a failed jelly, cook a new batch of meat products in it. Then you get a very strong broth, which, of course, hardens.
You should not try to make jelly thicker by simple boiling - without adding a second portion of meat or gelatin. When boiled, the portion of gelatin added during the preparation of the first jelly will lose the properties that make ordinary broth into jelly.
Mistress of the note
When cooking meat, be sure to remove the emerging fat from the surface of the broth, otherwise it will acquire a greasy taste from a long boil. When heating gelatin, do not bring it to a boil, because its gelling properties disappear from it. It is enough to bring it to such a temperature that the crystals dissolve easily, but the gelatin itself does not boil.
You should not put gelatin more than required by the recipe. From this dish not only gets an unpleasant taste, but also becomes very dense, rubbery.
Jelly can not be put in the freezer. Once in the room, he begins to thaw hard. If in winter time you brought jelly to the balcony and left for the night, make sure that the temperature on the balcony does not fall below 2-3 ° C.
If for some reason you do not want to redo the jelly, boil the soup out of it. But broth from under the jelly turns out to be rather muddy, which is not suitable for every soup. Cook this first dish in which the opaque broth will not be noticeable. It can be borscht, solyanka or any puree soup.
The finished aspic is stored in a refrigerator in a closed container (so that its flavor is not transferred to other products) for no more than 2-3 days. After a few days, its taste deteriorates sharply, and its appearance also deteriorates.
