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🥚 Block 7–8: Stocks & Eggs

← Block 5–6: Mother Sauces | Block 9–10: Seasoning & Flavor →

"Stocks are the foundation of professional cooking. Eggs are the chef's ultimate test."

Quick Reference: → Block 7–8 Recipe Quick Ref

⚗️ Experimental — This block has not yet been cooked through by the author. Content is draft; recipes and timing are untested.

Before You Start Block 7

Read these first:

The Block 7 Rule: Get your frozen chicken carcass from Block 2 out of the freezer the night before the block starts. You're going to use it.

Session 25 — Soup Architecture

Skill: Understanding soup as a category — not recipes, but architecture. Tonight you make one purée soup and learn how the same structure produces every purée soup in existence.

This session is required — soup architecture is foundational to stock-building and flavor layering in everything that follows.

📖 Read first: How to Make Any Purée Soup — the technique scales to any vegetable.

The five soup families — know these and you can improvise forever:

Family Technique Example
Broth/consommé Clear liquid, flavored by solids Chicken noodle, pho, ramen broth
Purée Cooked vegetables blended smooth; no cream needed Butternut squash, tomato, parsnip
Cream soup Purée + cream or béchamel for richness and texture Cream of mushroom, vichyssoise
Bisque Shellfish shells simmered into the base; always cream-finished Lobster bisque, shrimp bisque
Chowder Chunky; potato base; salt pork/bacon; cream-finished New England clam chowder, corn chowder

The universal purée method — memorize this, not any specific recipe: 1. Sweat aromatics (onion, leek, garlic, celery) in fat until soft — don't brown them 2. Add your main vegetable, cut uniformly so it cooks evenly 3. Add stock (just enough to cover); season lightly now, adjust at the end 4. Simmer until vegetables are completely tender — they should crush against the pot wall 5. Blend (immersion blender in the pot, or batches in a blender with the vent cracked) 6. Adjust consistency with stock; adjust seasoning. Finish with cream, butter, or acid.

Full Meal: Roasted Butternut Squash Soup + Gruyère Croutons + Apple, Walnut & Endive Salad

Component Notes
Soup Roasted butternut squash — your purée technique showcase
Bread Gruyère croutons — broiled cheese on thick bread; a step above "crusty bread"
Salad Apple, walnut & endive — bitter + sweet + crunchy; cuts through the rich soup

The roasting step is optional but worth it: it caramelizes the squash and adds depth a boiled purée can't match.

The professional difference between good and great purée soup: Seasoning at every stage (the aromatics, the stock, and the final adjust), and texture — it should be silky enough to coat a spoon without being so thick it's porridge. Strain it through a fine mesh sieve if it isn't smooth enough after blending.

📖 Also read: How to Make Restaurant-Quality Stock at Home

Block 7 — Stocks & Broths

⏰ Planning Ahead

  • Session 26 (Chicken Stock): 3–4 hrs of gentle simmering; start afternoon or earlier
  • Service 7 (PROJECT: Beef Stock Day): start stock by 9 AM; 6–8 hrs passive + soup assembly at dinner

Block 8 — Eggs

"A chef is judged by their eggs."

Before You Start Block 8

Block 8 dives straight into egg technique — no additional reading required. Sessions pick up below.

Unit 1 Checkpoint

Before you move on to Unit 2 (Building Flavor), take stock of where you are. The next unit assumes everything here is solid.

This is not graded. It is honest.

Knife Benchmark (repeat from Block 1–2)

Set a timer. Brunoise one medium onion. Stop the timer when you're done.

Block 1–2 time Today's time Δ
_____ min _____ min _____

If your time has improved by more than 20%, your knife skills are compounding. If not — that's useful information too, not a failure. Return to the Block 1–2 onion exercise on a the project session before Block 9.

Cook-From-Memory Test

Without opening any recipe, cook one of the following from scratch:

  • A velouté or béchamel (one of the mother sauces from Blocks 5–6)
  • A properly seasoned chicken stock (Blocks 7–8)
  • A three-component dinner: seared protein + pan sauce + simply cooked vegetable

The only rule: once anything goes on heat, no tabs open.

Skills Checklist

Before Unit 2, you should be able to answer yes to all of these:

  • [ ] I can julienne, brunoise, and chiffonade without looking up how
  • [ ] I understand the difference between sauté, sear, braise, poach, and steam — and when to use each
  • [ ] I can make at least two of the five mother sauces from memory
  • [ ] I can make a proper stock (bones, mirepoix, cold water, long simmer, strain)
  • [ ] I can cook an egg five different ways and explain what I'm doing and why
  • [ ] My knife is sharp and I know how to maintain it

If you're checking all of these: you're ready for Unit 2.

If you have two or more unchecked: spend the start of Block 9 revisiting the weak spots before committing to the new material. It's worth it.

Optional: Go Deeper

These aren't required reading — but if something from this block sparked a question, here's where to go.

The Truth About Stock

Stock is the most important prep you can do. The difference between a sauce made with real stock versus carton stock is the difference between a restaurant dish and a home-cooked dish.

Egg Science

You cooked eggs five ways this week. Understanding the protein science — why they set at different temperatures, why salting before vs. after matters — unlocks every egg technique that exists.

Watching a Pro Do It

  • 📺 Julia Child: French Omelette (The French Chef, Season 1) — The original television omelette lesson. Child demonstrates two methods — the classic shake-and-roll and a flat filled version — with the unfussy confidence that made her a legend. Compare your technique to hers after Session 32.

← Block 5–6: Mother Sauces | Block 9–10: Seasoning & Flavor →