I tried a different approach with making some homemade stock today. Normally I pressure cook everything, strain it through some cheese cloth, then let it cool and skim the fat off the surface. Today, I decided to try a different method, which supposedly should yield a clearer stock. The idea being, that if you cook your stock at a low enough temperature, the proteins won't break apart too much, leaving the stock "cloudy". Supposedly when you pressure cook a stock, the high temps and the strong pressure pulverize the proteins and cause them to emulsify with the fats (or something along those lines), so a gentler simmer at a lower temp is preferred. I had heard of people making stock in their slow cooker, so I decided to give that a try this time around. The end result initially didn't look much different from when I make it in the pressure cooker. However I noticed about 30 min after putting the stock in the fridge, that there was an awful lot of "debris" starting to "clump" together. This wasn't floating to the top along with the fat, in fact some of it was sinking to the bottom. Does anyone know what this stuff is? Are these proteins joining together? Am I going to need to re-filter the broth a second time through some more cheesecloth to remove this after I skim the fat? I had never heard of having to filter homemade broth twice, and I'm reluctant to waste more cheesecloth to do so again, since it kind of defeats the purpose of saving money by making your own stock from scratch.
