How to make the perfect stock

Anthony Blake Picture Library

8th April 2010

The chef Tom Kitchin swap tips with Alex Renton on how to make the perfect stock

“You can cheat on light chicken stock, You can cheat sometimes on fish stock. But bouillon [beef stock] cubes don’t make it. They taste like . . . well . . . salty bouillon cubes.”

So says the American chef Anthony Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential, and an expert on chefs’ crimes, moral and technical. In top kitchens artificial stock is as unmentionable as silicone on a supermodel. Except, of course, chez Marco Pierre White, who says that he has used Knorr cubes for 30 years and now takes money from Unilever to advertise them on the telly.