Chicken Stock
Stock is a handy thing to have on hand, be it chicken, vegetable, beef, or some mishmosh of leftover vegetables and meat bones. I suspect that’s how it originated, as a way to extract every last bit of flavor and nutrition from food: boil some water with the bones from yesterday’s meat and the leftover fluffy tops of vegetables and voila, that’s another meal squeezed out of your food! I don’t need it often, but when I want to try a soup or a risotto or something else that requires stock, it’s nice to be able to pull some out of the freezer. Canned stock is usually laden with preservatives, chemicals, and tastes too salty, and although it’s cheaper in terms of cash than making stock from scratch, that’s because the costs are hidden from the consumer and passed onto the population at large as externalities. Food politics aside, though, I like making things from scratch. There’s just something comforting and fulfilling about making a risotto from start to finish, and having a pot slowly simmering on the stove for hours gives the kitchen a warm, homey feel.
Stock recipes vary by cuisine, with each cuisine using it for different dishes and using different ingredients based on what’s indigenous to the area. The recipe I usually make is an Italian one from the excellent cookbook Pasta Fresca, by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman. Quite frankly, it’s a bit on the sweet side and is a funny brown color rather than being perfectly clear, but I suspect that’s because I didn’t put enough salt in and was too lazy to strain it more than once.
Utensils:
Stock pot, 8-10 qt
Spoon, to skim off the scum and fat
Colander or sieve, clean dishtowel, and big mixing bowl to strain the stock
1 2-3 pound whole chicken, with feet if possible
1 pound chicken backs and necks
Water
1 carrot, trimmed of its leafy top (or not)
3 stalks celery, trimmed (or not)
3 sprigs parsley
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 bay leaf
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper or a few peppercorns
On the meat:
1. If you buy meat often, one thing you can do is get a whole chicken, eat the breasts/thighs/wings/whatever, then toss the neck, back, and other bones in the freezer until you want to make a stock. In the long run, it’s cheaper than buying meat pre-cut, as you get more meat with the bones as a bonus.
2. Bones: both local butchers and the meat counters at grocery stores have backs and necks on hand, and they’ll bag some up for you if you ask. Even the Shaw’s in New Haven, which is not an upscale Shaw’s, had marrow bones, and they were helpful and nice when I wandered in last year saying, “This cookbook says I need…marrow bones? For…beef stock?”
3. If you don’t want to deal with a whole chicken, you can make up the weight with odds and ends: more necks and backs, wings, etc. This is what I did, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying a whole chicken.
On the vegetables:
You can trim them of their leafy bits if you like, but if you don’t have another use for them, I figure you might as well toss them in as not. Rinse them well, making sure to get all the dirt off the skin and out of the crevices, particularly the celery. There’s always dirt on the bottom of my celery.
Wash the chicken carefully, rinsing out any blood that remains in the cavity, and gently pull off the extra fat attached to the breast and tail areas. Place the whole chicken and necks in a soup pot. Cover with water so that it is 4 inches above the chicken and bones. Bring to a boil, and carefully skim off all the scum as it rises to the surface. When there is no more scum, add all the remaining ingredients, lower the heat, and simmer, partly covered, for at least 1 hour, or 2 hours for a richer broth. The more slowly the broth bubbles, the clearer the soup will be. Strain the broth, reserving the chicken and vegetables or discard them, if desired. Either use the broth immediately or refrigerate it for later use. If you do refrigerate it, remove the fat from the top when it has congealed.
Straining the stock: stick the big mixing bowl in the sink and place the colander or strainer in or above it, lined with the clean dishtowel. Slowly pour the stock into the colander; go too fast and it’ll overflow. Once it’s all transferred, strain it back into the pot, and again if you want the stock extra-clear. Store in medium-sized tupperware, which thaw more quickly than large ones and have the added benefit of being about the right amount of stock for one meal (for me; I cook for one person). I stuck out a tupperware of stock to thaw last night, and it was mostly melted with a sizable chunk of ice floating in the center this morning. It had to be heated for the risotto anyway, so I dumped the whole thing into a pot, covered it, and turned the heat on low to gently warm it through.
Making stock is usually a weekend project. It doesn’t require much attention, but it takes time and a relatively uncluttered stove top and sink. Once it’s done, however, I have enough tupperwares of stock to last for months, depending on how often I use it.
