Chicken Consommé with Shredded Crêpes

• How to make clear, fat-free broth
• How to improvise your own Consommé variations
• How to make broth from bones

To many of us, consommé is a distinctly unpleasant gelatinous substance that comes out of a can, designed to torture us when we’re not feeling well to begin with. This may explain why it has lost its popularity and rarely shows up on menus despite being one of the few delicious foods that don’t have a speck of fat. This would seem to make it, in our calorie-obsessed age, a perfect candidate for rediscovery. As with so many foods first sampled in canned versions—creamed corn and tomato soup come to mind—our prejudice can be righted only by tasting the real thing in a good restaurant or by making it ourselves. Authentic consommé is simply a clear double bouillon (broth) made by using meat—usually beef—to make the second broth. More extravagant versions can be made by using the double broth to moisten more meat—the result being a triple broth. You can continue in this way, ad infinitum, until you give up or go broke.