Chicken Stock
-4-5lbs of chicken carcass (I buy these from local farmers)
-vegetables: onion, celery & carrot
-aromatics: herbs like rosemary & thyme, garlic, ginger & peppercorns
-2 tbsp vinegar
Place ingredients in a large stock pot & cover with cold water. Bring to a simmer on a back burner, cover & let simmer on low as long as you'd like; 12 hours at a minimum. The acid helps leach minerals from the bones. When it's finished, strain the stock through a cheesecloth & refrigerate. I get about 6 liters from this quantity of bones. If you want to minimise the volume of what you have to store, simply return the strained stock to the pot & simmer uncovered to reduce.
Making stock is less a recipe & more a method. I use organic ingredients & lots of aromatics to create a rich stock.
I keep the stock pot on my stove for a day or so before beginning the stock, so I can throw the ginger & onion skins, rosemary stems & other scraps into the pot. Experiment with flavours until you find a balance you love!
So how do you use your stock? Besides making soup or beans with mine, I freeze it in half-cup portions in a muffin pan. I use one portion for sauteeing veggies, add some to the liquid when I cook rice or other grains, and, of course, use them for making poultry gravy.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I love ^that^ idea!
ReplyDeleteI also put cheese rinds into my stock. Yum!
I love the muffin pan idea- that's a good way to keep using stock in small quantities! It would melt much faster that way too. We have soup 2-3 times/week, so most of our stock goes into that. Anywhere you'd add liquid to a dish, I'll often use stock. It most often goes into tomato sauces, chili or stew, or is used to make a gravy or sauce for caseroles & savoury pies.
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