Taking Stock in the Kitchen

I'm going to come right to the point this week.

THERE IS NO REASON YOU SHOULD NOT BE MAKING

YOUR OWN CHICKEN STOCK.

I'm going to repeat this.

THERE IS NO REASON YOU SHOULD NOT BE MAKING

YOUR OWN CHICKEN STOCK.

I watch a lot of shows about cooking, and when I see someone using canned or boxed chicken stock in a recipe, it really pisses me off. Meats stocks are used in so many recipes around the world. They're used as a base for gravies, sauces, rice preparations, soups... the list can go on forever. If you are interested in cooking, and cooking well, why would you use an inferior ingredient when you can make the same at home, deliciously, as well as economically?

Let's take chicken stock as an example. For "gourmet" chicken stock, you'll pay upwards of $4.00 per quart at your local market. You can make the same at home for almost nothing. Here's how I do it.

I almost never buy anything but whole chickens. I can get a whole roaster at my supermarket for anywhere between 89 and 99 cents per pound. I cut up the chicken into its constituent parts, freezing any pieces that I'm not going to use right away, and use the remaining carcass for stock. Oh, inside the chicken you'll usually find a small bag that contains the neck, livers and gizzards. Don't throw these out. Like Dan Ackroyd said in that famous SNL Julia Child sketch, "Save the liver!" You'll use the neck and gizzards in your stock.

Never broken down a chicken? Don't worry. It's easy and only takes a few minutes. All you need is a good sharp knife. Watch the following video and you'll see how easy it is.

All right, now that we're all experienced chicken cutter-uppers, let's make our stock. There are two basic types of chicken stock, roasted and unroasted. Roasted chicken stock uses the roasted chicken parts and unroasted chicken stock uses the raw chicken parts.

Roasted Chicken Stock

Place your chicken parts in a roasting pan a roast at 400 degrees until the chicken has turned a deep brown. When done, place these in a pot. You can also use the remains of that roast chicken you had last night. Waste not want not.

Add two or three carrots, two or three celery stalks, and one onion, all roughly chopped, and one clove of garlic, crushed. Don't bother to peel any of the vegetables.

Add a couple of bay leaves and about a teaspoon of whole peppercorns.

Add enough cold water to cover everything by about an inch.

Bring to a boil and reduce the heat so that the water is just simmering. This makes for a clearer stock. You can also skim the fat and foam that develops to help keep it clear. After a little while there won't be anymore foam to skim. Go do something else and let this stock simmer for three to four hours and let cool. You may have noticed that I didn't add any salt. You add the salt when you use the stock.

When cool, strain the stock, remove the fat and store, either in the refrigerator, or frozen in small batches. To defat the stock, refrigerate it and when the fat sets, remove it in pieces with a spoon. I like to use a fat separator. The one I recommend is by Oxo Goodgrips. It has a little stopper that goes in the spout and really keeps the fat out.



If you keep your stock in the fridge, bring the stock to a boil every few days and it will keep indefinitely, and just add it to the next batch you make. Did you know that in China there are master sauces that are reportedly hundreds of years old, kept fresh and unspoiled by continuously adding new ingredients and reboiling?

We're not quite done yet. There's still a lot of meat on them thar bones. Pick the meat from the bones and use it in soup. Or, if you have pets, it makes a nice special dinner treat. Around our house, the dogs call it shmutz night. Actually, we call it that. The dogs just eat it.

Unroasted Chicken Stock

Make unroasted chicken stock the same way, just don't cook the chicken. The resulting stock will be a little lighter and clearer, good for light soups and sauces.

The final cost? About a buck for a couple of quarts. Remember, the chicken would have normally been thrown out, so, what did the chicken actually cost? You really only had to buy the vegetables, and they probably didn't even cost more than a dollar. That's pretty economical, and once you used your own chicken stock, the store bought stuff is never going to taste the same.

So start making you own chicken stock today. I don't want to have to come to your pantry and check for boxes and cans. Remember:

THERE IS NO REASON YOU SHOULD NOT BE MAKING

YOUR OWN CHICKEN STOCK.