Photos courtesy of Molly Clark
What are you doing Saturday? I feel strongly that if you were Gwyneth, you would change your plans and go to the Northeast Farmer’s Market winter market and check out Taking Stock Foods, which is making their commercial debut as one of the first solo stock businesses to open in Minnesota since the bone broth craze overtook the nation.
If you don’t know about bone broth, pull up a chair: It’s what in-the-know people have been drinking for over a year. Gwyneth detoxes with it, Kobe Bryant heals with it, and there are take-out windows in New York and Los Angeles for fancy people who don’t have all day to sit over a stock-pot like some kind of peasant.
But has there been a local broth-dedicated company for Minnesota people to heal and detox with? No! Until now.
Taking Stock Foods is the new venture by two longtime restaurant folks, Molly Clark and Maddy Kaudy who met while cooking at the Strip Club Meat & Fish, one of the local restaurants most associated with nose to tail cooking. “We’ve seen a lot of bones,” Clark told me. “Actually, she taught me how to butcher.” After cooking together for a while, the two bonded over the idea of a hyper-local, high-quality broth business. They started working on recipes and developed the perfect one that has nothing in it but Kadejan chicken, filtered water, shallots, carrots, and local Leatherwood fruit-wine vinegar, which helps get the minerals out of the bones. “A big part of our company is vetting our sources, and standing behind a super-local product,” explains Clark. She says her target market will be athletes, dieters, pregnant women, and folks on limited diets because of illness such as cancer, all of whom will want a very pure beverage.
Clark says their broth has, in an eight ounce serving, ten grams of protein, zero grams of carbs or fat, and forty calories. Also, she says technically it’s not bone broth, because to be bone broth they would need to cook it until it became brown and sludgy, but their cook’s tastes require it to be clear and golden. And yet bone broth is what’s on trend, and as there’s a whole Twitter account called @StockStickler devoted to scolding bone brothers with “that’s also called stock”, why shouldn’t I get in on the whole bone broth trend? I mean, in New York they’ve already evolved to melting chocolate into hot broth, which is really super gross and also means we have a lot of catching up to do. Thankfully, Clark and Kaudy are ready to help.
“We’ve become total geeks about broth,” Clark told me. “You know how there’s a huge bone broth fad for people using it as a prenatal beverage?” I did not. “Mama Tong is really big in California, for women who are quitting coffee, but want a hot beverage in the morning. So we felt like this is going to have to be something a first time expectant mother would put in her body, or someone suffering with cancer and needing good nutrition when their bodies are going through a big change.”
But how does it taste? I don’t know! It’s debuting Saturday, at 10 a.m. If you get there before me, post your thoughts in the comments, will you? Pints of broth will cost $8, and will mainly be sold frozen, so you can stock up—get it? Ah, that’s a good one. Stock up on stock. Anyhoo, there’s nothing standing between you and investments in stock except your stock excuses.
P.S.: Don’t even post one thing in the comments about how you could make your own stock for a fraction of the cost. Everyone knows you won’t actually do it. To prove it, I leave you with three important stock recipes you won’t make:
1. Marco Canora’s Brodo Bone Broth for when you want to eat the fancy New York City take-out-window stock that fuels artists, millionaires, and their top assistants.
2. Jacques Pepin’s Bone Broth for when you’ve got all day to do things right.
3. Mama Tong’s Ginger Chicken Bone Broth for when you’re fancy and pregnant in Los Angeles and probably thinking about naming your child after a fruit.
That’s all I got. Congrats Molly and Maddy, break a leg! And the rest of you who are still reading when this has gone on too long: I’ll tell you a secret. Here’s how you turn your bone broth into pure gold. Add 24 carrots! That’s all folks!!
