- Yeah (choking). Okay, we're on the right track. (dramatic music) Behold, the humble stock cube. Funny, isn't it, how you
kinda take it for granted. You just buy this block. You think what is in
this square of wonder? It's flavour packed, right? You put it in risottos,
which we will later. You put it in soups, in fact
it can be a soup in itself. You put it in loads of things. You kind of trust it with your life. And I wanna make my own. That is right, folks,
ladies and gentlemen, today I am attempting to made my very own, homemade stock cubes or powder, we'll come onto that in just a bit, but the process itself
is rather long indeed. So, I think the first thing
we'll do is get it going and then we'll have a
bit of a chat about it. And also, please bare in mind, outside my house, at some stage, in about the next half an hour or so, for the rest of the day, there might be insanely loud drilling. Because they're putting in
some fibre optic broadband or something, apparently they think the Internet's gonna take off. I don't believe in the Internet myself. All right, let's take stock. aseasyasapplepie.com,
they've got this recipe here for basically a model of homemade stock and basically how you can mix it up with different vegetables and flavourings and herbs and spices,
so we're gonna do that. But they're basically
mentioning what I just said at the start of the video,
how just break in a stock cube and it could be anything in there. Monosodium, glutamate,
caramel colour, fats, flavourings, preservatives, (mumbles), this is gonna be natural, so it's gonna be potentially good and at the end, to justify it, we'll get Mrs. Barry to
try two different risottos. So this is gonna be vegetable,
and we're not doing meat or anything like that today, we're not boiling down bones,
anything crazy like this. We're gonna use this sort of stuff. (fingers snapping)
Ooh, yes. My chopping board has
turned into a garden. We've got two carrots, two celery, a big old stick of leek,
'cause I'm half Welsh, I'm gonna put a bit of that in there. Onion, garlic, some smoked paprika, because it's mine, you can put any spices and vegetables and herbs, and whatever you wanna put in there. You can use anything you want, like tomatoes and all other
crazy types of spices. The only other thing that
will act as a preservative that goes with it is salt. Because that will act as a preservative, it will stop bacteria and mould and mean, that as long as you keep
it in a cool, dry place, it will store for three months. So, let me prep this. I've literally got the skin off the onions and the garlic and peeled the carrots and chopped them a teeny weeny bit. And also the stalks of some of the herbs. That's pretty much it and you'll see that it weighs 600 grammes. (heaving) And we need 20%, which is 60 grammes of salt. Right on top of that like that. That, somehow in a few hours, ah, you're still hot, is gonna be that. I'm gonna just add little
bit of smoked paprika, literally half a teaspoon like that, okay? Just 'cause I wanna put little
bit of Barryness in there. We're gonna warm this up, keep stirring it from time to time for two hours. All right, you can hear it
starting to sizzle already. But I haven't actually
brushed around the paprika or the salt yet, so
I'm gonna just do that, but what I can't understand is normally, when I'm using a big old pot like that, I'm sticking oil and butter in it, like lubricants and flavourings
to help it cook quicker. For this you really need
to keep your eye on it and make sure that you don't
burn the bottom of your pan, what you're relying on is the moisture, you know if you heard the
term of sweating vegetables, we're gonna sweat the carrots, the moisture will come out of that, and we've gotta a simmer all off and draw it right down. So, the main thing to do is, like I say, is just keep stirring it, I guess. I've never done this, but
we're just gonna stir it from time to time. It smells amazing, oh well, look, can you see? We do have moisture in there. It's working. So this is basically my
life for the next two hours. We're an hour in and
look at that moisture. We're just simmering that off, that's all we're doing. So much concentrated flavour in there. No joke, I've been sat
here for about 25 minutes, trying to read different websites and they're all telling
me different things about the actual difference
between broth, bouillon, we're gonna call it bouillon, all right? Sorry to annoy people, and just stock cubes. I think stock and bouillon
is kinda like the same thing. And broth was historically
kinda like simmered down meat with the bones and stuff
in and also vegetables. Kinda like what we're doing now. Which is that. So I think that is what we known as broth and what stock turns into. I think that's what we're going with. I mean that's what I always thought. But I just wanted to make
sure I get my stuff right and really I'm not. I mean, ultimately, what I wanna go do is have something like
that in a condensed form that I can drop into water
like at the start of the video and just have it to hand. So I think that's
basically what bouillon is. You see, how that's like a powdered form? So, we're probably today gonna make this and as a bonus thing at the end, I might try and do
this, it might not work. Don't get me started on
the bouillon stuff as well, 'cause some people were,
one websites was like, no, it's the most horrendous thing ever. It's full of horrible stuff. And then the other thing was like even on this, it's like,
it's really healthy, gluten free and gorgeous. I'll tell you what I do know, I know exactly what I put in that pot and just like any other recipe, that is a good thing. That has been two hours and I'm now dumping, oh
my gosh, I missed it. Can't see it too well. It's like vegetables in the mist, the sequel to "Gorillas In The Mist". And the herbs have gone
a little bit brown, but what do you expect? They've been there for two hours. Just do ensure that you stir it. It does smell really good though. But its deceptive, because there still will
be moisture in there, so we're gonna whiz this up and then we have to dry it out again. (gagging) Oh my gosh, this tastes like the sea. The salt is still very strong in there. Perhaps once we've whizzed it together, that will be better. (spitting)
Wow. (machine whirring) That ain't doing it very well, is it? Maybe I do it in smaller batches? (machine whirring) Yeah, that's better. Oy, there we go, you see? Look how blended up that is. That's looking good and
we will blend it again, but you can see, there's
still all that moisture in it which is why we now have to dry it. Yep, yeah. This basically is probably
extremely salty baby food. Oh, I forgot to say, my
salt calculations at start when I said it was 600 grammes of veg and it's 20%, I added 60 grammes of salt, about an hour into simmering
I did realise that, so there is the 20% in there. Which probably is why it
did taste like the ocean. I felt like Jack Sparrow for a bit. There we go, just spreading it out, so it's nice and thin. The thinner it is obviously,
it will dry out quicker, which reminds me a little
bit of the steps I was doing on the homemade cornflakes project but that should do. And we're now gonna bake it and dry it, and probably mix it a few times in between for an hour and a half. It might need more. I'll keep you posted, I
got nothing else to do. All right, it's been in there 45 minutes, I think by the looks of
it, it's quite dry already. (laughing) But no, it's actually still
a little wet to be honest, so that's what we want. We wanna mix it up, keep
playing around with it, flatten it out and making
it so it's completely crisp. (mellow music) Gotta be honest. Right now I'm thinking
it's probably a lot easier to just go to the supermarket
and buy a pack in a minute. All right, this is definitely one of the weirdest things I've ever done. It's kinda got the texture
now of the breakfast cereal, Weetabix, which is great, because it wears up, which
is what we wanna do really, but I'm just finding a few little parts where it still feels a little damp still, so I'm gonna keep pushing on. And it's gonna be about an hour and 45 bake in total I think. I mean, it's broken, it's flaky, I'm gonna let it cool down
and then I'm gonna whizz it up and hopefully, we'll have our powder. (crunching) It's still salty though. But then again, you don't
normally put a stock cube in your mouth anyway, do you? Huh, let... (choking)
yeah. Okay, we're on the right track, that's salty too. Okay, so this is about a
third of the total amount that I've got. (whirring) I just think we made stock powder stuff. Cool. There's some bits are
really, really ground up and there's a couple
that are still chunky. So I'm gonna get a rolling pin. I've basically made a vegetarian beach. There we go, look at that. And by putting it into
a sealable jar like this or some Tupperware or something like that, apparently, if we keep it cool and dry, so out of the sun, all that stuff, and obviously not wet, it
will last for three months. But can we make it into a cube like that? It doesn't really matter, a bit like the tub of bouillon there, about a heaped teaspoon of this
will be the same equivalent, it doesn't really matter,
it's just a convenient way to store it. The only thing I can think
of, which we'll check in the morning, is to
fill an ice cube tray up, one of these squares with it and just see if it all firms together. I'm not that confident in this working. But maybe this slight moisture
in the freezer will bring this together a little
bit and it'll become some solid, homemade,
stock cube block tomorrow. And I guess we'll find out about that, but let's see if this actually works, and makes a brothy stock. So, just like the start of the video, let's just see if we can get this going. Not expecting it to all dissolve. But I don't really mind that. Oh, yeah, baby, yes. The only way to really compare it, is to get someone who has not
had the involvement in this to compare between this and the
standard blocky, cube thing. So I'm now gonna make,
I made a mess there. (laughing) Two butternut squash risottos okay. One with this and one with
your standard cuby thing and see if Mrs. B can tell a difference and see if one tastes
better than the other. I was just thinking this
recipe could be a good sort of get out of jail thing. Imagine you go to the supermarket and they're out of stock. Come on now. Okay, I'm about to make two
butternut squash risottos, this is how I'm gonna do it. To make the risotto, first of
all, grab a butternut squash, peel it, de-seed it and slice
it into even sized chunks. You're also gonna wanna
slice up a couple of leaves of sage as well. This is gonna go down
together on a baking tray with some olive oil. Don't be afraid to get your hands in there and just scatter it all around, shove it in your oven to roast away for about 30 minutes. In a frying pan, we are
gonna melt up some butter and add in a chopped onion
and just fry them away for round about eight to 10 minutes, basically just to soften them through. The rice is then gonna get
stirred in with the onions and you wanna get it nice
and coated in the butter. Pulling it to get quite shiny and then the edges of the
grain will actually start to look transparent, that is when you know it's time to proceed. The next step before
adding in the stocks is to add in some wine. Yep, that's wine. Make sure that's in there
and just let it simmer and bubble away until it's
completely evaporated off. Sauce pan's gonna be store bought stock. I'm gonna put my homemade one in this one. So this is for me where
I had to divide it up, but for you, you would
just add your one batch of stock in with your rice. Just do this gradually and warm it through with the rice and take
about 25 to 30 minutes, just keep stirring and warm it all through until all your stock is used up. (mellow music) (laughing) I don't wanna be biassed, but my one looks way more colourful and interesting. With the risotto done,
you can take a batch of the squash and mash it
up and stir it through, kinda like a baby food puree,
into the risotto rice itself. You can also add in some
Parmesan and some butter and then on top, scatter it
with some remaining chunks of butternut squash and some sage. Mrs. Barry, it's over to you. Bit of blooming stocking. - Right I'm ready. - [Barry] This is I'm feeling
pressure, I'm pretty nervous. - Okay. - [Barry] And that one is a different one and that's a different one. - Ooh, I like them both. - Well, that's good. Actually, that's actually really good, because if you like them both, that means I've done something right and it tastes-- - They both taste really, really good. - Really? I have had a taste off camera and for me there is a clear difference between one and the other, but that's my opinion. - Is that one yours? - No, (laughing) no it's not. (laughing) no. - But can I say? I prefer this one.
- You do? Okay. - I honestly do prefer this one. - Well, I preferred that one as, I genuinely, I tried off camera as well, I chose both of them. - That makes me sound even
worse, I preferred that one, 'cause I thought it was yours. - You've gotta be honest, whoops. - Sorry.
- not a problem. For me, it's richer and
there's more flavour, this one is a teeny bit more creamier. - Yes, I thought that as well. - But the homemade one's got, it's pushing more flavours in there, which it should, 'cause I
rammed a lot of food in there. - It's very tasty. I can't wait to have it for tea. - Yeah, we got a lot
of risotto for dinner. Well, there we go. It worked. I'ma take that.
- yay. - But even though you
liked the other one more. - No, no, I didn't, I like this one more. - All right, the really
winner right here is risotto. ♪ Check your level player ♪ ♪ No matter what your style ♪ ♪ The kitchen's for me ♪ ♪ Sideburns moustache, goatee ♪ ♪ Maybe all three ♪ - Good morning, Internet. It's been an overnight
set for those cubes. I had a look about seven hours ago and it was basically still powder. So, I put a teeny amount of water in and it kind of absorbed it, I wanna see what it looks like. All right, so bare in
mind, I only made the one. There's a little bit of residue in there. Well, it's come out in one. You see the dust on top of that? Oh the dust, the powder right? That's what it was like last night. So I put some moisture in there and it's got about, I don't
know, half of the way down? And kinda created a stock cube. What I've learned from this video, it doesn't really matter
how you have your stock, you could put it in a hat if you want, it doesn't really matter. So, I was thinking this
is a really cool way. Because this has effectively worked, rather than keeping it in
a jar for three months, you can keep it in the freezer forever. So, I know obviously
for me the wacky stuff's always gonna be the stuff that's like, oh my God, it's great, I
wanna do more and more. But this sorta stuff
for me, I really enjoy. I've learned a lot today. I know that was yesterday,
but you get the point. (laughing)
Barry!!! love him!