Indespensible Chicken Stock

Photo by Rob Robitaille

Chicken stock, or any stock for that matter, is such an easy thing to make, but hardly anyone does it. There is nothing you can buy at the store that will even come close to homemade stock. The key to stock is bones. I never by boneless meat or chicken. For one, it is not worth the increase in price, and two, it is really easy to do yourself with a bit of knife skill. I always leave a little meat on the bones, too. Then, I vacuum seal the bones and throw them into the freezer until I have enough to make a big kettle of stock. Furthermore, when I cook a whole chicken, duck, turkey, or goose, I always freeze the bones for stock. It saves money, it is easy, and tastes great. Just like anything else, and stock is no exception, there are many different ways to make it depending on who you talk to.  The method I will be discussing is fairly traditional, but I have simplified it a bit so I don't have to tend it for hours on end.

Although you can make it in one day on your stove, if you start early and tend it throughout the day, I like to use my oven because you can literally set a timer and forget about it for a several hours.  Even though I love to cook, baby sitting a kettle of stock for several hours is not really my idea of fun.  To make stock, you need a kettle.  It doesn't have to be big, but I think the bigger the better so you can make more stock less frequently.  As I said, it is really easy, but not really all that fun, so the less I have to monkey with it the better.  Next, you need bones, although you can make vegetable stock, but that's a topic for another time.  When I say bones, I mean ones with some meat left on them.  I am focusing on chicken stock here, but anything that walks, flies, or swims is fair game and the process is similar with some minor adjustment in cook time and aromatics.  You will also need some aromatics (vegetables, herbs and spices) and good water.  I am lucky enough to live in a town that has really good water, but if your water is high in minerals, or just tastes like an aquarium, like some communities along the Mississippi, you may want to use filtered water.

A good rule of thumb is that 40% of your stock be made up of bones and vegetables and the rest water.  Keep in mind this is by weight.  So 4 pounds of bones and vegetables to 6 pounds of water would work fine.  Remember, this is just a guide.  You can vary this with great success, but my recommendation would be to weigh out your first couple of batches so you can get a feel for how much of each ingredient you need. Don't bother weighing your water, because as the old saying goes, a pint's a pound the world around.  Soon, you can just eyeball the ingredients with excellent results.

To kick things off, I adjust the rack in my oven so that my kettle with fit in with some room to spare on top and set it to 450 F.  Then I add my bones and vegetables to the kettle and place it in the oven.  You don't need to do this step, but I really like the extra flavor that a bit of browning adds to the bones and vegetables.  The vegetables I use are onions, peeled and quartered, celery, coarsely chopped and carrot, peeled and coarsely chopped.  Let it roast in the oven until it takes on some color and becomes very aromatic. Don't wander off during this time.

When your ingredients have sufficiently browned, remove the kettle and add the water and some seasoning.  I like a couple bay leaves and some green pepper corns.  Don't get too carried away because you never know what you will be adding this to and you don't want to have strong flavors that will clash with what you will be making, so keep it simple.  Also, you do not need to add any salt.  Since this is a liquid, salt can and should be added at the time of use.  Place the kettle on the stove and, if possible, offset it on the burner so the heat will be on one side only.  This will create a kind of convection that will help push the foam and fat to one side of the kettle making it easier to skim.  Bring it up to a lazy bubble where you only see a couple of small bubbles here and there. You do not want to reach a boil because it will make your stock cloudy.  Skim the fat and foam every 15 minutes until it it stops forming, then cover the kettle and place it in the oven at 180 F.  You can leave it in the oven for 12 hours, or more.

When your stock is done, let it cool and remove any additional fat that has collected at the top. If you refrigerate it, any fat remaining with solidify and you can easily remove it.  The only problem is, if it is really good stock, it will have a lot of gelatin that was converted from the connective tissue from the bones and you will need to warm it up so that you can strain it.  Otherwise it just kind of sits there in the sieve looking back at you like "Ha, should have warmed me, doofus."  When in a liquid, non mocking state, you can strain your stock.  I like to strain it into another kettle with a large sieve lined with a tea towel.  I have a whole stack of tea towels and their only purpose in my kitchen is for straining.  Then I gently pour it, using the lid to hold back the solids.  You can wrangle out the large solids with a slotted spoon, but it is best not to disturb it as much as possible.  In fact, stop before the kettle is completely empty because there will be some sludge on the bottom that you don't want clouding up your finished stock.  What you are left with is a beautiful, relatively clear, rich stock.  I like to freeze mine in quart sized plastic containers, although you can freeze them in ice cube trays if you want smaller portions.  Ziploc Twist 'n Loc containers work perfect.  Keep in mind that you will only be able to fill them up to about three cups to allow room for expansion once the stock freezes. The Solids left over have given their all and can can be discarded.

Now, you will find yourself with several containers of delicious stock that you can use any time.  It should keep for a couple months in the freezer, but I always seem to use it faster than that.  Once you become familiar with this process, you can start to tweaking your recipe to suit your individual taste.  Again, home made ingredients will make what you add them to that much better.