Fish Fumet

A good beef stock is made with meat bones, a good fish fumet (concentrated stock) needs fish bones. Ask the fishmonger to collect the bones when he is filleting, you’ll need about one kilogram. The bones have to be from lean fish like sole, halibut, plaice, flounder, etc., no bones from salmon or maquerel. By the way, if the fishmonger gave you more bones than you need: the Japanese grill the fish bones and pluck the leftover meat from it.
There are some links in the recipe to the tips & tricks of broth making. There you can find descriptions of how to strain, reduce, cool and keep your broth. Because that is the same for all broths and stocks, this information is gathered on one page. On that page you can also find links to other recipes for stocks and soups.
Yields 1 litre (4 cups) fish fumet; preparation 90 minutes.

1 kilo (2 pound) fish bones
4 stalks stem celery
1 leek, chopped
1 onion, skinned and chopped
1 tsp crushed white peppercorns
some mace
2 bay leaves
3 litres (6 pints, 3/4 gallon) water

Preparation

Put fish bones in a pan with vegetables and spices, bring to the boil but immediately lower the fire. Skim carefully, let the stock simmer without boiling for three hours. Some recipes prescribe a much shorter time, notlonger than twenty minutes to prevent the fish stock turning bitter. In my opninion a longer simmering (without actually boiling) results in a tastier fumet.

Strain the stock, and reduce with 75%. That means that from the three litres of water plus additional liquids from the vegetables you’ll end up with about 7.5 decilitres (3 cups). If you plan to use the fish stock for a fish soup, you can limit reducing the stock to 1 litre (4 cups). Let it cool quickly. Now you can freeze what you don’t need immediately. A fumet is often used in small quantities. Use an ice cube holder to freeze some of the fumet for when just a spoonful is needed, and freeze some in portions of ½ cup. Do not forget tothe stock, because once frozen it is difficult to identify which stock it is.

 

A recipe for concentrated fish fumet
© Author Christianne Muusers