A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
OK, so we're doomed: on that we can all agree.
But that doesn't mean we need to live like savages post the Apocalypse.
So, herewith one of the most important discoveries I have made in my long-ish life: how to make a proper chicken stock. (This is an extension, by the way, of Rob's unexpectedly popular foodie thread yesterday)
The basic aim is this: you do not want your stock to emulsify. If it emulsifies (ie goes cloudy because the grease has bonded with the liquid) you have failed. Your stock will still be edible but it will be greasy and unattractive. What you want is something clear and amber.
1. Take all the bones from a roast chicken dinner (including the various wing/leg/thigh bones from your family's/guests' plates: don't be squeamish, it's not going to kill you) and roast them in the oven (I know you have a different word for "roast" in the US: "broil" is it? Something weird like that) until they are light to medium brown. (If you don't do this, the stock is more likely to emulsify: not good)
2. Put the roasted bones into a large saucepan with a peeled onion, some carrot, some celery and a bay leaf (plus a bouquet garni, if you can be bothered but it doesn't matter). Cover with water.
3. Bring very, VERY slowly to a simmer so gentle that the surface of the liquid barely moves.
4. After two, three, four hours - or when it looks like you've got all the useful stuff out of the bones and vegetables - strain through a sieve into a pan. Then you can either leave it to cool and put into a freezer bag and freeze it. Or you can reduce it still further and pour it into an ice cube tray, so that you have mini stock cubes for flavoring sauces, gravies and suchlike.
5. This is not a waste of time. Do not buy ready-made stock. Certainly do not use stock cubes. It just isn't the same.
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Mar '11
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
The paper towel never falls apart. Oddly, I find the cheaper brands of paper towels are usually better filters than expensive ones. Paper towels allow for the large flour sifter... much better filter rate.
I have not tried with a coffee filter. I suspect it would take too long for my patience, but it seemingly would strain even smaller particulates. Though before I sound too certain, I should try straining coffee through a paper towel to see how it works.... :-)
Mar '11
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
You're assuming there will still be chickens after the apocalypse?
I cheat and bring Oxo over with me from the UK (for both beef and chicken) - hard to find in the US. I'm too lazy to make the real thing, though I am sure it is much better.
As to the lousy British food - that is outa date - one of the few benefits of belonging to the EU, or maybe it's the US influence?
Dec '10
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
FIFY.
On our one trip to the UK many years ago, we discovered that when in Britain, eat as the Romans do. The Italian eateries were fantastic. We were traveling with culinary cowards, so we didn't get to try the Indian food, but all reports are it is among the best in the world.
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
That sounds like a very sturdy recipe. Allow me another:
Take a raw chicken. Remove the innards, because they can make the soup sour-tasting. Poach it in lots of water, with salt and a few peppercorns, some bay leaf, and any aromatic vegetables you've got, slowly, at the simmer, until the soup tastes excellent. If you're feeling fancy, skim the top every so often.
The benefit of using raw chicken: richer tasting stock and more of it.
Take the chicken out, let the stock sit and settle, remove the meat from the chicken.
You now have lots of stock, some of which can be frozen, some of which can be made into soup. And lots of cooked chicken, some of which can be diced and put back into the soup when you serve it, although I like a chicken soup with just diced vegetables; some of it can be used cold in sandwiches; some of it can be sauteed quickly in shallots, wine, and butter and served over noodles or spinach or roasted potatoes; some of which can be mixed, cold, with Duke's mayonnaise -- or Helman's, I guess -- into delicious chicken salad.
Jun '11
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
Utter cheapness means I make a lot of chicken stock. I am not the proper sort of cook who makes a stock along the lines detailed above...I could care less whether it looks cloudy, for one...but the fact that whole chickens often approach 50c/lb means that I debone a lot of chickens, and everything that gets removed from a spatchcocked bird (backbone, nasty bits, wing tips, all bones except leg and thigh) goes into a pot with a chopped onion, celery, and herbs, and gets cooked...yes, boiled...for an hour or three. The near-deboned bird gets smoke roasted on a kettle grill, and I then strain the stock and make a gravy with it. Did this last night, actually, with some (also very cheap) mashed potatoes and (again, quite cheap to make) homebrewed ale to accompany.
You want another cheap cuisine? Try learning Indian cooking. Dal, rice, and chapati will fill a lot of bellies rather inexpensively. However, a combination of ignorance and perhaps forgivable laziness has made spending more than 15 minutes cooking dinner the eccentric habit of hobbyists and hipsters these days!
Dec '10
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
Speaking of gravy... my brother taught me a great tip for your Thanksgiving turkey gravy which makes emulsification a feature. First, baste, don't bag(!) your turkey. Cook it on a rack in a roasting pan with carrots, onions and celery (proportions to your taste) and about 1/4 inch of water in the bottom. The technique we use comes from Cook's Illustrated (America's Test Kitchen) and seems foolproof.
You've got to attend to the bird and the vegetables throughout by adding water or broth, because to make the gravy your best ever, you have to make sure the vegetables don't scorch or crisp for the duration. Then, when you're ready to make gravy, collect the drippings and vegetables in your blender and puree it all into a roast vegetable slurry and add it to your standard gravy recipe. No giblets. Unless you're British and like that sort of thing. We like ours with plenty of carrots and onions, but use proportions to your taste.
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
Rob, that sounds absolutely delicious. Will you please come over and make it for us? James, you're invited too, of course.
Jun '11
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
Mark Wilson
James Delingpole:
1. Take all the bones from a roast chicken dinner (including the various wing/leg/thigh bones from your family's/guests' plates: don't be squeamish, it's not going to kill you) and roast them in the oven (I know you have a different word for "roast" in the US: "broil" is it? Something weird like that) until they are light to medium brown. (If you don't do this, the stock is more likely to emulsify: not good)
We still say roast in the US. Broiling is a different process which places the heat source above the food, often in a separate compartment underneath the main oven. · Oct 4 at 9:14am
I believe our friends on the Scepter'd Isle refer to what we call broiling as grilling, if I'm not mistaken. Hence the traditional "mixed grill" which is usually "broiled" in US parlance. Roasting seems to be our term roughly analogous to baking, except we bake bread and sweets, and we roast meats...more of a contextual difference.
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
This is tragic. I post deep, insightful, thoughtful stuff on politics and get maybe 15 comments. But I talk about chicken...28 comments already.
Right, tomorrow's post: the joy of curry.....
Jul '11
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
James Delingpole: This is tragic. I post deep, insightful, thoughtful stuff on politics and get maybe 15 comments. But I talk about chicken...28 comments already.
Right, tomorrow's post: the joy of curry..... · Oct 4 at 12:43pm
Oh, I am so there...
Apr '11
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
James Delingpole: This is tragic. I post deep, insightful, thoughtful stuff on politics and get maybe 15 comments. But I talk about chicken...28 comments already.
Right, tomorrow's post: the joy of curry..... · Oct 4 at 12:43pm
You must give the people what they want, James.
Nov '10
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
Could these be the first glimpses of a post-apocalyptic stock market?
James Delingpole: This is tragic. I post deep, insightful, thoughtful stuff on politics and get maybe 15 comments. But I talk about chicken...28 comments already.
Right, tomorrow's post: the joy of curry..... · Oct 4 at 12:43pm
Dec '10
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
James Delingpole: This is tragic. I post deep, insightful, thoughtful stuff on politics and get maybe 15 comments. But I talk about chicken...28 comments already.
Right, tomorrow's post: the joy of curry..... · Oct 4 at 12:43pm
For a sure-fire generator of hits, when a blogger needs to take a vacation from serious effort has curry replaced Sarah Palin?
Since the blogosphere has become a target rich environment for new laws, here’s a proposal: As disputes about controversial candidates for president get fewer, the probability of a chicken recipe post approaches 1.
Corollarily, when a blog’s star starts rivaling Facebook, start adding servers to handle the rise in hit volume and shortening word limits to soften the fall in finesse.
Sep '10
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
James Delingpole: This is tragic. I post deep, insightful, thoughtful stuff on politics and get maybe 15 comments. But I talk about chicken...28 comments already.
Right, tomorrow's post: the joy of curry..... · Oct 4 at 12:43pm
Complain all you want James: at least you don't have to wear a fur coat 24x7. Can't believe I got talked into it by my agent. Last time I take career advice from a KCRW Martini Shot listener.
Jan '11
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
But what to use the stock for? I have half a dozen pints of stock in my freezer and they just sit there. Soup, of course. Sometimes I just boil carrots in it. Beyond that, I'm at a loss.
Jul '10
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
Sauces, yes, sauces & dressings.
There's no need to start with some complicated, potentially depressing journey with rouxs & such.
Dig steak sauce? Mix 2 parts of your favorite with 1 part stock and whatever you think is missing: garlic, onion, chile pepper, reduced red wine, whatever. Cook it down to your desired thickness.
Like BBQ sauce? Use four parts of your favorite yankee industrial sludge (KC masterpiece, etc) and add one part cider vinegar and one part stock. Again, cook to desired thickness.
Like ketchup & mustard on a burger? Mix two parts of each with one part stock.
Like mayo on a sandwhich? Mix five parts with one part stock.
Like chili-style stews? Curry? Jerk? Replace half the water with stock.
Add it to a pasta sauce aggressively; add it to a hot sauce carefully.
In all instances you add depth of flavor to something you like anyway.
There are a million better options than those, to be sure. But if you have excess stock, just mix it with stuff you like to an appropriate consistency and enjoy.
Edited on October 5, 2011 at 4:25amApr '11
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
I do what Nic Neufeld does, except that I make my stock with scraps of everything. Whenever I buy a bag of chicken leg quarters and chop them up to make vinha d'alhos or adobo, there are always scrap pieces, broken drumsticks, etc. and I throw them in a Ziploc in the freezer labeled "soup scraps". If I have a lonely vegetable in the fridge that I won't be able to use before it goes bad, I throw it in the sack. Carrot peels, celery leaves, and the ends of bunches of herbs go in there too. When it's time to make stock I use these.
Homemade stuffing uses chicken broth.
Jun '11
Re: A Useful Thing I Learned About Chicken Stock
Thanks all. It's off to the kitchen for me tonight, since my wife is making a chicken dinner. I'll try to make some points with the soup stock. ;-)