Build Your Culinary Reputation with this Classic Stock Pot
A famous practical joke among chefs is to tell a young cook to make her soups and gravies out of "pipe stock." She's heard about stock and knows that no decent culinary artistry can be accomplished without a stock pot. But she's never heard of pipe stock.
While all the cooks, bakers and dishwashers are chuckling behind their hands she runs around the kitchen looking for a can of pipe stock, can't find any and is afraid to ask.
What is pipe stock? Well, it is the liquid that comes out when you turn on the faucet. In other words, it is plain water. Pipe stock is used by madmen, assassins and others whose ambition is to destroy civilization.
Let me tell you how I found out about stock pots. In 1951 as a young army private just out of cook school, I was assigned to work at the Officers Club at the Presidio in San Francisco. Army cooks would kill to get a cushy post like this. I fell into the job by accident. The joke was I didn't know how to cook beans, or anything else.
All I knew was how to keep a mess hall clean, which was the main subject hammered into the minds of young cooks at the 6th Army Cooks & Bakers School.
We were taught how to avoid poisoning the troops, that is, how to keep grease and flies out of the food.
To be sure we understood the importance of this subject, we were shown frightening movies about the horrors of disease caused by flies and how the trots had put an entire British Regiment out of action at Waterloo.
How we got a movie on the British Black Watch laid up with the trots I don't know.
It was frightening to hear the announcer - in a cultivated British accent, no less - tell us in sickening detail how one cook's disregard of flies and grease nearly resulted in a disaster of massive proportions.
A Lesson I Never Forgot
Apparently the British troops got horribly, horribly sick at the battle of Waterloo - the Brits always get more horribly sick than the soldiers of other nations - and they nearly got wiped out by Napoleon or somebody. The Frenchies didn't have the trots so they weren't constantly leaving their guns unattended while they hastened to the latrine.
The point I started to make here, before I went off on a tangent about the British Black Watch, is that the Army did not teach me how to cook.
The most glaring omission in my training was the subject of stock pots. The Army did not even teach me what a stock pot was, let alone how to make one.
Found My Stock Pot in San Francisco
My introduction to the stock pot begins in San Francisco at the Presidio army base. How I ended up at in San Francisco is a story in itself. You see, our entire company was about to be shipped off to a post in the middle of the Arizona desert, a terrible outpost manned by doomed devils a hundred miles distant from the nearest town. A fate worse than death for a bunch of boulevardiers like us.
Then in a terrific stroke of luck just before we were to leave our highly desired post, the sergeant asked if there was anyone in the company who had prior civilian experience in restaurants.
Well, since I didn't want to be posted out in the wilderness and since I had once worked as a busboy at Wilson's Little Cafeteria in Palo Alto, California I immediately put up my hand. Oh yes, I was well experienced.
"Okay, Johnson," said the sergeant, "you're gonna stay here in San Francisco and go to work at the Officers Club. You'll have private quarters and work a five-day week with weekends off. Besides that, you'll get separate rations and extra money. The rest of you slow-witted sad sacks are going to Fort Wauchuka. That's out in the desert. Nothing but rocks and gila monsters. No weekends off, either. You'll love it."
My first morning on the job at the O Club I arrived early and began investigating the stove, trying to figure out how to turn on the fires under the grill. It was a mystery.
The Filipino waiter stood there watching me. He shook his head and said, "Oh, you need training!" How right he was.
You Get The Idea? I Knew Nothing
Later that morning chef Jimmy Yolef arrived and went to work. I watched him closely to see if I could learn anything.
The first thing I found out was that he had a big STOCK POT. But that was all he allowed me to learn by watching him work. He stood very close to the stove while he worked, spreading his arms and elbows so that I couldn't see what he was doing.
