concentrates

Concentrates are a modified form of a sauce or stock, that try to reduce the water content without damaging the rest of the food. (as usually happens if you boil food for several hours, see the 'Common problems' section below)

Reducing the water intensifies the food's flavor.

list of concentrates

Below, I only list the strongest form of each sauce available.

Concentrates that are my favorites:

• tomato concentrate (often available as double concentrate, but occasionally as triple concentrate)
• blackstrap molasses
• stock concentrate
  • Better Than Bouillon
• maple syrup, grade "very dark"

Other concentrates that I like:

• apple butter
• balsamic vinegar glaze
• stock concentrate
  • Penzeys soup bases
  • Zoup! concentrates
  • Williams-Sonoma stock concentrates and demi-glaces
  • Broth Sisters stock concentrates

Ones I definitely don't enjoy include — Marmite/Vegemite,

concentrates to try

Things I want to try, to see if they might be interesting to me.

Regardless of manufacturer:

• (list of more)
  • cookie butter
  • miso
  • red bean paste
  • doubanjiang
  • harissa
  • curry paste
    • from India
• meat glaze

Specific manufacturers:

• Cook's Delight soup bases
• Broth Sisters pastes

how concentrates are made

Concentrates can be difficult to make at home, especially if they require use of a vacuum evaporator (as tomato concentrate does) or freeze drier.

Both of these processes (vacuum evaporation and freeze drying) intensify flavor by reducing the water content.

This is crazy, but apparently it's not impossible to do vacuum evaporation at home. [part2] [part2-archive] [part1] [part1-archive]

• The person who wrote the above articles is Chris Young. He has hung out some forums, and given a little more advice on doing this at home. [2] [his X] [his YouTube] [his IG] [his store] [his store] [biography] [biography]

common problems when concentrating or reducing a sauce

Boiling and even simmering a sauce (called 'reducing') for long periods of time can cause delicious volatile compounds to evaporate along with the water [2].

Even if you eliminate volatile evaporation, there's still the problem that heating a sauce for a long period of time can greatly modify the flavors in-place. Inherently, the sauce is being cooked the entire time. (In some cases, that extra cooking is thought to be inherent to the food's final taste, as happens with apple butter. But it doesn't have to be inherent. What would apple sauce that was vacuum-evaporated taste like?)

The sole goal is to remove some water. Other changes that happen at the same time may be undesirable.

details about freeze drying

There are many foods that can not be freeze dried, including fatty meats, butter, honey, jelly, etc.

TODO: Is it possible to remove a smaller portion of the water content, not 96% of it?

unorthodox ideas

Concentrates usually seek to reduce the water content. Are there other things that one could try to remove, without altering the flavor, such as oils? (is it even possible to evaporate oils without evaporating the embedded volatile compounds?)