My exploding chicken stock

Hello,

For the past two or three years I've been very enthusiastic about creating a lot of my own soups, sauces and stock, and freezing large batches for later use. Typically, I'll let whatever I'm cooking cool to room temp, put it in Mazon jars, chill the jars in the fridge, then move them to the freezer and let them freeze with the lid off, then put lids on once they are frozen solid. This seems to work with everything I make EXCEPT for my chicken stock! For some reason that I can't quite fathom, when I put lids on the chicken stock, the jars completely crack within a few days. I'm still able to thaw out the stock and remove the broken glass, but it just flabberghasts me that the ONLY recipe I make that has this glass-breaking ability is a simple chicken stock. Is my freezing process evil? Is there some other method I should be following? Any suggestions or similar anecdotes would be helpful.

Thanks,
Scottah

[nancya]

I've always frozen chicken stock in plastic containers...

I have no clue why your glass containers are breaking, but it sure is a interesting story!

[W.DeBord]

Why use glass, it has no advantage only disadvantages? Unless your canning something and need subject your container to alot of heat, plastic is the easiest way to go. You can use plastic baggies even for soups. Place the baggie in a can to hold it and fill with soup, tie top tightly and freeze, you can fit more into a tighter space this way since the form isn't ridgid.

P.S. I also can't think of a reason why their breaking if it's not about a quick temp. change to the glass....

[momoreg]

Freezing liquid expands. Use plastic instead of glass. And don't take your chances with glass in your stock. Make a new batch and throw away whatever may have glass in it. Maybe the other liquids you freeze contain more solids, or are more viscous, which is why they don't expand as much.

[panini]

Just a quick note. I got chills when I read that you let things cool to room temp. Please tell me you are icing these and chilling them as quick as possible, never letting things sit out.
I'm sure you know that letting foods sit in the danger zone for any period of time is not healthy. Just a healthy reminder, you know 90% of all food borne illness occurs in the home.
Jeff:

[kuan]

Heh Funny you mention that foodborne illness thing. When I was a kid, my grandmother used to make curry. She let it sit out all day and even overnight and the stuff never spoiled. She DID have a rule though, always use a clean spoon when dipping into the curry. This prevents cross-contamination. We never got sick unless we ate out.

My wife was in China for six months and she never got sick until she went to a KFC. Go figure! We must be the odd ones out.

Kuan

[panini]

kuan,
I certainly do not want to change the topic here, but please be very careful when you post about sanitation. I'm not sure if you are in the industry, but we have very hard facts on safe foods.
There appears to be a lot of posters here who may not have had the benefit of professional food safety courses.
Your post about leaving food out for long periods of time might lead someone to believe that it's ok to do so. They might think this advice is comming from an approved source. So lets be careful when posting things that can make someone very ill or even worse. Not ranting,just concerned
PS. food does not have to be spoiled to contain harmful bacteria.
Jeff

[kuan]

Lighten up, and I don't mean go easy on the butter. I just relayed a personal childhood memory and you took it the wrong way. Sometimes I feel like a nut, sometimes I don't. I just don't need for people to click on a disclaimer everytime they read something I write.

Kuan

[panini]

don't worry, I won't post to you anymore. It was not a disclaimer, it's fact, one can die from eating day old chicken, even if it does not taste spoiled. Your personal memories were interpereted by me to directly contradict what I was saying .Thats why I posted.
Sanitation is the most important element of our industry and I don't take it lightly. Wash those hands

[panini]

Sorry Kuan, I should have e-mailed my last post but couldn't figure it out.
Jeff

[RathWr]

Chicken stock has a high fat content and fat expands as it solidifies - when frozen in plastic the plastic will "give" to accomodate the extra mass, glass will not and if has a lid on it, it's not even able to rise up but creates a vacuum and breaks the glass. Plastic storage bags are the way to go and take up a lot less room. Good luck with your soups

[kuan]

I don't think chicken stock has a high fat content. In fact, if you start off with just the bones and skim it off you'll have an almost fat free stock. Water is the only thing which expands when frozen. Fat does not expand. Also when something expands it does not create a vacuum, in fact, if it's in a container, it creates more pressure. The volume increases, the density decreases, mass remains the same.

Kuan

[chefboy2160]

Hey Kuan , Wow a lot of talk about exploding stock . Youve gotten a lot of good advice here . I personally use Zip Lock
storage bags for any kind of freezer application and as far as the cooling goes I use cooling wands at work and at home I reduce the stock and then I'll make a quick ice bath in the sink and quick chill my stock out there . I will also put some ice cubes in the reduced stock also . This is for food safety as well as for keeping me sane as I dont have the patience for some things and as a chef you learn how to do things the best , safest and quickest way possible .

[Dlee]

scottah,

To answer your question. You might be filling your mason jars too much. You will notice that after awhile that when you freeze a liquid, it starts to bulge upwards at the top of the product. This usually happens if your freezer is too cold or if the product is held in the freezer too long.

How can you remedy your problem. The answer has been stated in many of the previous post. First cool in a ice bath (fill your sink and throw in a lot of ice. Every now and then stir the product so that the heat in the center will mix with the cool liquid on / near the outside of the S.S. container) Then put your product in a plastic container (plastic bags, plastic jars, plastic ice tray. plastic anything.) Lable date and freeze.


Just a little note; glass in the fridge and the freezer, not a good mix. The thing about glass is that it can shatter into very small pieces that you may not see or get out because of the colour of a product / colour of the glass.... what will happen if you eat broken glass......

D.Lee

[monpetitchoux]

My theory (take with a bit of salt, for I am no food scientist): Chicken stock and other clear soups are mostly water. And since it's mostly water that has been simmered, dissolved gasses escape, so there are less impurities (though we may add a few), And when it freezes, I think it will freeze more like pure water, which expands quite a bit. You should see the volcanic bulge that occurs when they freeze stocks at the restaurant! I think the reason is because after they rapidly cool the stock (sink ice bath plus a couple of frozen plastic bottles of water in the stock itself), it gets repackaged into a clean dry container and then goes immediately into the walk-in freezer (and that place is coooooold). The edges freeze really fast so the only place available for the pressure to relieve itself is in the middle (sort of the same concept as a cake cooking in too hot an oven, thereby creating a dome) thus the bulge. Some of the bulges are very dramatic. As for why your other soups don't explode, I think it's because they have solids in them which get squeezed when the liquid is freezing so the pressure is absorbed within the soup and does not stress the glass as much. This is just my 2-cent theory.