Kitchen 101: Making Chicken Stock

Let’s start today’s lesson off with a question – why do we find ourselves constantly using this?

We are conditioned to believe that our lives are far too busy to make the real stuff, therefore we need to buy the convenient powdered product. Hell, you might not know this, but most major hotels, restaurants, and retirement homes base their whole cooking program on these products.

Why? The answer is convenience, cost of labor, and ease of planning.

The impact of using these products is not fully known. I can tell you a few things though – reading through he ingredients are a quick way to show you that you aren’t just getting chicken goodness out of the deal. It’s a tragedy though – you will soon see how easy it is to make a huge batch of chicken stock for yourself.

A while back, I promised you a video on making chicken stock. I humbly apologize for not having the skills needed to make that video with a Windows Machine. Instead, I figured a traditional post would be the way to go.

Before we start with today’s post, let’s recap some previous posts for a head start on today’s task.

• Butchering a chicken – http://welldonechef.com/k101-butchering-a-chicken.html. Once you have your chicken cut up, use the carcass for the stock – the perfect way to stretch your dollar. If you don’t have a chicken to cut up, the bones from a demolished roasted chicken will work fine.
• Secret Laws of Stock Making http://welldonechef.com/kitchen-theory-the-secret-chef-laws-for-great-stocks-and-broths.html. We will be following those concepts here shortly.

Making Chicken Stock

Ingredients:

• 6 whole chicken carcasses (about 10 lbs.)
• 15 quarts cold water
• 1/4 cup white wine vinegar (or red wine if you prefer.)
• 2 medium sized onions, peeled, chopped into 1 inch slices
• 1 carrot, peeled, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 1 rib of celery, chopped into 1 inch chunks
• 1 inch of ginger, sliced in half
• 1 bulb garlic, chopped in half
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 1 bunch thyme

Method:

Grab the biggest pot you have. You will need to have at least twice as much room as you have bones. You will be cooking this stock over a long period of time; having twice as much water as your bones will ensure you get a good calcium and gelatin extraction from your bones.

Plop the bones into the pot. You can rinse them first if you like. One benefit to rinsing is that there will be less impurities to skim later. (Translation: less work for you!)

Next, you want to use clean, cold water. I am adding white wine vinegar to the water at a rate of 1 teaspoon per 2 quarts. (Notice the extremely accurate measuring?)

Add the water to the pot, and fill until the water is about twice as high as the level of the bones. Turn on your heat to medium and wait for the works to heat up.

Once the mixture starts to heat up, the impurities and fat will rise to the top. First, lower the heat to the lowest it will go. Then, take a clean ladle, and using a circular motion, push the impurities to the sides of the pot. You can dip the edge of the ladle into the water and collect the scum in the bowl of the ladle.

Here you can see what I am talking about. This step is optional, but something you want to do. The work you do here will ensure your stock is clear later on. Never let the stock come to a boil – that will make it cloudy as well.

Now, cut up your vegetables into large chucks. They will be sitting on top of the simmering pot for more than a few hours, so don’t be afraid to cut them into large chunks. We call this cut “mirepoix” in the professional kitchen. Some people will argue that carrots have no place in a chicken stock. I like them in there because they flavor the stock, and make it golden. These are called aromatics. I don’t like to put them into the stock at the beginning. I’ll explain later. How much do you use? A rule that I use is 10% of the weight of the bones. For 10 pounds of bones, that’s 1 pound of vegetables.

After a good 8 hours of simmering, put your aromatics in. Some people will argue with me on that. I go by what gets results. I have found the best way is to put the flavoring agents near the end of cooking.

Here you see what the aromatics look like at the finish. This was after 6 hours of simmering. If you put them into the stock at the beginning, then cook it for the full 20 hours or so, they will break down into your stock and make it more like a puree.

Strain your stock into a holding vessel. (You see I have a huge bowl here.) Don’t rush this step, slow and steady is the key. I have rushed this before, only to have the bones and vegetables fall into my clean broth. Notice the oven mitts? That’s for you, as I am sure you don’t have Teflon hands like I do.

Here is what the end result looks like. I am used to a clearer product, but this one will do. As you can see here, there is a lot. That’s okay – it freezes well, and is easy to pull out and use.

So, here is the final product, complete with it’s packaging. In all, I got 10 liters of stock here, all for the cost of the bones, a bit of vegetables, some spices, and a bit of time. This is going into to the freezer for later use.

That’s all there is to making a great stock. I have shown you how you can use your stove to your advantage, and have a product that has great nutritional benefits over the convenience product you buy in the store.

Your turn

Now that you know how to make chicken stock, what do you plan to make with it?

Tagged as: Broth, chicken, DIY, Kitchen 101, prep, Simmer, stock