At about age 20, in a marvelous cookbook called The Supper of the Lamb, I learned about glacé de viand. I am still making it decades later, because it works kitchen magic and there is no commercial substitute. Think of it as a boullion cube that died and went to heaven. Rather than giving a nasty chemical edge to your sauce, it lends a subtle fullness and richness and pulls together any flavors that you care to add or elevates simple wine and cream and pan deglazing to an artful dish.
The principle could not be simpler. Make a big pot of excellent stock, then cook it down into a thick syrup that gels hard when put in the refrigerator. Cut your pure meat gelatine into cubes, freeze them until you need them, and throw one in every time you make a pan gravy, or cook anything where concentrated wonderful meat juice would be a good addition. You can also make it with roasted beef or veal bones to go in meat dishes.
In recent years I have been able to make my broth out of my old laying hens, and there is no good substitute for a really old hen full of omega-3s and collagen from a long and well-fed life. But you can make do with backs and necks of any good organic chickens. Roast them golden in a hot oven, fill your pot with them, add an onion, a carrot, and a stalk of celery, add enough cold water to cover, bring slowly to a simmer, and simmer forever. I simmer for 24 hours, so I only make broth on weekends. Cool, remove all solids and strain the stock, return to the pan, and boil down over high heat. I make at least a couple of gallons of broth at a time, so the final boiling-down takes a few hours and has to be watched. I do it when I have other processing tasks to do in the kitchen. Boil, boil, boil, until finally the stock looks darker and thicker and is reduced to a fraction of its former volume. Don’t let it burn, which it will readily do when it’s really concentrated. Thick bubbles in clusters will form. Pour it out into a square baking pan, chill a few hours, and see if it sets stiffly. If not, put it back in a saucepan and boil some more, then test again. After you have done it a few times, you can tell by looking at the bubbles when it’s ready to gel.
Once chilled and stiff, cut into cubes, put them on wax paper on a baking sheet, freeze, and put in a plastic bag in the freezer.
Now comes the fun part. Have some chicken (maybe PerfectSkin Chicken,) and a vegetable but no real union between them? Deglaze the chicken-frying pan with white wine, boil it down hard with a cube of chicken glacé, add half a cup of heavy cream and boil that down hard until it thickens, taste and adjust seasoning. Simple as that. I often like a bit of fresh chopped thyme with chicken, but suit yourself. Below you see a simple pan sauce made this way serving to unite chicken with pan-grilled oyster mushrooms. I like to nap the plate with the sauce rather than pouring it on top, to preserve the exquisite crunch of the skin.
Don’t be afraid to boil your pan sauces briefly but hard; that’s what makes them thicken with no flour. Always swirl in a bit of butter at the end for finesse and polish. Don’t ever take your eyes off them during the boiling-down or disaster may ensue, but it only takes a couple of minutes, while if you had no chicken glacé and used a cup of stock, it would take a lot longer to boil down and wouldn’t be as good. The chicken glacé will thicken the amalgam just enough that your stirring leaves pan bottom exposed for a moment, and that’s perfect.
My urban homestead 