Chicken Stock

My stock drawer. Beautiful, no? (Also, ice cream churn. They're friends!)

Ah, here's something useful: chicken stock. Any of you who've been reading lately have probably noticed the "chicken are abundant sources of economic deliciousness!" kick I've been on. This is the latest -- and probably final -- entry in that series.

Home-made stock really is a marvelous thing to have in your kitchen. You'll be surprised just how much richer it is. There are fine brands of store-bought product out there; Pacific Foods, f'r instance, makes a totally fine range of stocks. If you must, for whatever reason, use store-bought stuff, I highly reccomend Better the Boullion. The principle problem with store-bought stock is, after all, concentration of flavor. Working from BtB, you can mix your stock as strong as you feel like you need it. But again: this is all store-bought stock. Your stock will be better; done really well, yours might be the best you ever have.

To be honest, I dont really grok why this is. Would it be so bad for a company to sacrifice a little efficiency and a little quantaty in favor of quality? Perhaps the economics just don't shake out unless you're a dude in a kitchen with a pile of chicken, beef, or veal you want to convert into a liquid. Whatever the case: I've yet to have a storebought stock that was better than the crummiest home-made stock. The best home-done stuff is perfectly unbelievable.

You'll need:

Equipment

Either 2 large stock pots, or 1 large stock pot and 1 large bowl

A collander

Cheesecloth or a chinois

Ingredients

Chicken

Mirepoix

Clove

Garlic

Bay

Parsely (optional)

Apple cider or white wine vinegar (optional)

Salt

Your main ingredients here are chicken and mirepoix, for which you'll want a 2-1 ratio chicken-mirepoix by weight. Generally, unless you're making stock specifically for one-and-only-one four-person batch of soup, you'll want to make stock in largeish batches.

On the question of water-to-poultry ratios, I follow Bernard Clayton -- as much a guru of soup as the world has ever seen -- who advises 4 quarts of water per three pounds of chicken. And yes, you can definitely do a quart of water and 3/4 pound of chicken.

Before you get going, you'll want to make your sachet d'epis -- a cheesecloth baggie of spices. To be honest... I often just chuck my spices straight in the stock, assuming they wont be too hard to strain out again later. One way or the other: your sachet should contain/amount to your garlic, clove, and bay. Parsely is highly optional -- as I dont like it much, I usually leave it out. For a batch of stock containing 6 lbs of chicken and 8 quarts of water, I usually use three whole cloves, three well-bruised cloves of garlic, and three crushed bay leaves. Remember, though: you're building a background flavor here. Stock becomes the body of a food; you can always add more flavor later.

Oh, and a bit of potential apocrypha: my mother always told me to add 2-3 tablespoons of vinegar to a stock early on in the process, the idea being that it leaches nutrients from the bones of the bird, making the stock healtheir. Do I know if this works? No. But I like the way my stock turns out, so I don't sweat it much.

Method

Finally, something refreshingly easy!

1. Put your chicken in a pot big enough to fit everything in. (Remember, you'll be adding a few things as you go -- think ahead.) If using raw chicken, give it a good rinse in cold water first.

2. Pour the water over the chicken. Put the pot on the stove. Turn on the heat. Add vinegar, if you're using any.

3. Let the stock-to-be come to a boil, then cut it back to a simmer. Let this go for an hour.

4. After your hour is up, add the mirepoix. Make sure you get back to a simmer, then give it an hour and a half.

5. Add your sachet d'epis (or just add things directly to the pot). Simmer for a final half-hour.

Holy crap, it's stock!

The Hard Part

So you've made a pot of stock! Great. I told you making it was easy, didn't I? The tricky part is filtering and packing it. Alright, maybe not hard; maybe just kinda irritating. I'm going to talk you through my aproach, but remember that this is just to give you an understanding of all the things that need to happen. Just how they happen is up to you.

First off: your stock is full of bones, fat, and heat, and we've got to get rid of all of those things. Chicken stock spoils more easily than other stocks you could make -- it's a very good idea to cool it as qickly as you can. During the winter, I usually just put a lid on the pot and put it on my balcony until the next morning. During the summer, empty your ice trays into a sinkfull of cold water and plunk the pot right in. If you've the fridge space, put the stock in there once it get's down to room tempterature (puttng a 200-degree pot of stock in your fridge is like filling out a written request for all your other food to spoil -- don't do it). Let it get very, very cold.

When you return to the project, you'll discover something magical and handy: in the heat, the fat and oil separated; in the cold, the fat became a solid. (Your stock may very well be a semi-solid, too; this is not to be worried about. Home-made stock has a lot more stuff in it, including gelatin and protein leached from the bones and cartilage.) Using a spoon (it'll melt quickly in your hands), take this layer of fat off the top. You can save it; it's delicious for making things like gravy or matzoh-ball soup. You can also pitch it -- up to you. Congrats: you've just gotten the fat out of your stock.

If your stock has turned solid, you'll need to up the temperature for this next step -- we need a liquid we can work with. (Sure, you could do this step when the stock was just off the stove, but that means juggling scalding hot chicken bones in scalding hot liquid. You have been warned.) Once the phase-change has occured (or even while it's happening), get a collander, a large bowl or pot, and the trash can. Now, manage this trick: pour the stock through the collander into the empty pot. My collander has two handy arms that let it sit right inside my second pot; you might need a helper to hold one or the other thing. You're not going to be able to pour all of it in one go, especially if you're making a large batch. Pause  as needed to let the collander drain. Being somewhat obsessed with not wasting things, I usually press the chicken scraps and veggies lightly to help get a little more stock out of them. When you're satisfied with how well drained a particular collander full of scraps is, dump it in the trash. Continue on until you've poured through the entire batch of stock.

You're not done, mind. You've just removed all the big stuff from the liquid -- anything too large to pass through your collander. Sadly, your stock is still (I guarantee this) full of tiny bits of stuff you don't want to eat -- like, say, bone fragments. Fear not: there's an easy solution. Rinse out the stock pot you made stock in -- it doesn't have to be sanitized, but get all the junk out of it. If you're the proud owner of a chinois, grab it; if not, grab your cheesecloth, line to collander with it, and dampen the whole works with water. (This helps the cheesecloth be a filter.) You have a filter; you have a pot full of stuff to be filtered. Do it! Pour the stuff through the thing, for the win!

So: you've got a pot full of well-filtered stock. If you're picky about have remaining oil in the stock, you can refrigerate it again and get even more. If you're like me, you're ready to put it in containers and put it in storage.

Important Note: Chicken stock really is really perishable. I put all of mine straight into the freezer. (Okay, that's a lie -- I put it in quart-size plastic bags first.) If you're going to keep it un-frozen for any length of time, bring that sucker to a boil and keep it there for five minutes -- voila, pasturized stock.

Great, you're done! You now have a supply of tasty ingredient that probably cost you very, very little to make.

Some suggestions:

1. Make big batches. This is great stuff to keep around. Pull it out of the freezer, thaw it, and you're set to go.
2. Use this for efficiency: when I roast a chicken, I toss the carcass and all the bones into a bag in the freezer. When I have three or four carcasses, I make stock. I'll often add in some fresh chicken of some kind to build a rounder flavor -- raw chicken and carcass can be used in any combination. I usually leave all the stuff inside the carcass -- it is, after all, just more flavor.