Like a lot of my favorite restaurants Justine's exists in an old, broken down part of town where it's a roll of the dice as to whether your stereo will still be in the dash of the Econoline after your meal.

Over near the burned down Tejano bar, down the road from the brewery and around the corner from the brothel, Justine's sits; the kind of humble, delicious cafe that every city should rightly have.

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Sometimes you don't have an entire day to simmer a kettle of hog bones and convert them into a delicious, soul satisfying batch of homemade pork stock. You have to hit the kitchen like a runaway freight, get the recipe started and get back out so you can attend to the affairs of the day.

That's when we reach for the Kuhn Rikon, the Cadillac of pressure cookers. This crucial piece of kitchen ware enables us to cut our kitchen time by well over half and have the backbone of our recipes, homemade stock, ready for use in no time flat.

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With the afternoons at a balmy 105 degrees now, my stock making takes on a different tenor.

Those treasured Winter afternoons where I simmer a few pounds of bones on my stove top in a big kettle for a few hours are a distant memory.

But I still have to follow my credo that if you're not making your stock from scratch you're pissing up a rope.

As I write I have my Kuhn Rikon filled with chicken bones, celery, onion and bay leaves. After 10 minutes on high heat the little red gauge on the top of the machine popped up and now the flame below has been reduced to a tiny little candle.

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I've written before that the backbone of my kitchen is homemade stock.

Producing scratch stock in your home kitchen is the single most important step you can take to improve your cooking.

It's not difficult although it does take a fairly significant amount of time.

This formula relates to chicken stock

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The backbone of my kitchen is homemade stock. It's what makes the difference between a decent enough cook and a deadly serious one. If you're willing to take the time to make homemade stock you can seriously up your game in the kitchen.

I make two basic stocks: Chicken and Pork. Beef stock is another beast entirely. Easy enough to make in a professional kitchen but quite a difficult road to walk down in a normal home kitchen.

This formula relates to pork stock.

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