Kitchen Shortcuts: An Easy Trick for Straining Stock

published Jan 18, 2011
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

I like my homemade chicken and vegetable broth to be very clear and free of floaty particles, so I usually take the extra step of pouring it through a coffee filter. The only problem is that the filter seems to clog almost immediately. Does this happen to you? If so, here’s a great trick I recently learned for keeping those filters free of clogs.

The trick is to wet the filter with a little plain water before starting to filter the broth. Somehow, the fact that the filter is already saturated allows the broth to flow through much more easily.

I tried this with my last batch of vegetable stock and was surprised that I didn’t have to change the filters once. Only with the last few scoops did I notice the dripping start to slow down.

I’m very curious to try this with chicken stock. Since chicken stock is so much more oily and cloudy than vegetable stock, filtering it has always been a pain. It would save a big headache if dampening the filter helped make this step go more quickly!