Homemade All-Purpose Chicken Stock

To repeat the Monty Python joke I quoted a few weeks ago: canned chicken stock is, "like making love in a canoe."It's f-ing near water." Not that I haven't used the canned stuff or that I won't ever use it again, but nothing comes close to real chicken stock. So, if you can find the time, making it is "worth it" because quality base ingredients make simple meals so much more delicious. If you make stock now, you can make simpler yet more delicious meals later.

This recipe is for an all-purpose chicken stock. This is the one that you can use for decadent cream sauces, pots of beans or grains, braising pot roast or pork butt, or emergency chicken noodle soup. What makes this an all-purpose stock is that I don't use garlic, or tons of carrots and onions, or tons of salt. I use a few carrots and onions and a tiny bit of salt to build the flavor profile of the stock. If you use too much of those ingredients, then they can dominate your stock and then dominate whatever you are using your stock for. That said, please don't get overwhelmed by all the variations in stock/broth making. If you add a clove of garlic to your stock, you'll still like it.

Think of stock and broth recipes like chocolate chip cookie recipes. Some are certainly better than others but almost all of them are delicious and your life is always better with home made cookies just like your life is better with home made stock. Because there are so many different tweeks to a basic stock recipe and I don't want anyone to get overwhelmed, I've included variations and suggestions at the END of this recipe instead of before the recipe. I want you to make this stock, and I don't want you to get caught up in the details. The details are fun to play with, but ultimately are not that big of a deal.

Note about Uses: Use your stock in Cheery Cherry Rice, Refried Beans, Lentil Soup, pasta sauces, quick soups, when making pot roast, or braising pork or beef. If you don't make your own beef stock, I find that using 1:1 ratio of home made chicken stock with canned beef stock is far superior to just using canned beef stock.

Note about Equipment: You'll need 2 large pots (Ideally an 8 quart pot and a 6 quart pot), and a larger strainer. Optional but recommended: silcone babyfood freezer tray(s) either 1.5 ounce or 3 ounce size. I have some from WeeSprout but any brand will work. If you have a true stock pot and enough room in your freezer, please feel free to double this recipe.

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Homemade All-Purpose Chicken Stock

Makes about 4-5 quarts of stock. Takes about 4 hours to make.

Ingredients

1 four-ish pound chicken and neck. Save giblets and heart for another use OR 2-3 chicken carcasses with some meat (see note below)

2 large organic onions and skins, quartered (only outer onion skin removed or remove all of the skin if your onion is not organic).

2 large stalks celery leaves included chopped into 4-5 inch pieces

2 large organic carrots washed tops can stay on (or regular peeled and washed) cut into 5 inch peaces

2 bayleaves (optional)

Handful of parsley stems and leaves

1/2 teaspoon whole peppercorns

1 teaspoons salt (optional)

STEP ONE

Add all your ingredients to your largest pot (8 quarts or larger). Fill pot with water until it comes close to covering the top of your ingredients. Heat pot over high heat and bring to a boil. You'll then see grey scum rising to the top of your stock. Turn the temperature down to low. Use a spoon, or slotted spoon, to remove as much of the greyish scum as you can without removing the fat. This is called skimming your stock. I am not a neurotic skimmer. The scum can affect the taste/mouth feel of your stock, but if you're not making a fancy french soup with a clear stock, you probably won't notice. Just get as much as you can easily scoop out without losing the fat.

STEP TWO

Adjust the heat to bring your stock to a low simmer. Cook either uncovered or partially covered with a lid cracked over the pot. (depending on how much water you have in your pot and how much you want your stock to cook down). I prefer to cook mine with the lid off so that I can have a more concentrated stock. If your chicken rises to the top and pokes out of the water, feel free to poke it back under the water. BUT, try to avoid stirring your stock! Stiing it can emulsify the fat into the broth and can stir in any of that grey scum which you might have missed.

STEP THREE

OPTIONAL: If you're using a whole chicken, and you'd like chicken breast or thigh meat for chicken salad or sandwiches, then after one hour, carefully remove your chicken from the stock pot and slice off the breast meat and (using tongs) pull off the thigh meat, and then return chicken to pot.

STEP FOUR

After 3-4 hours turn the temperature off under your stock and remove from heat. Get out another large pot or very large metal bowl and set a strainer on top of it. (See photo below). Very carefully pour your hot stock through the strainer and into the next pot. Set aside the chicken carcass and veggie remnants.

STEP FIVE

Chill your stock. The faster you chill your stock, the longer it will last. I like to rinse out my larger pot and make an ice bath in the bottom of my larger cooking pot and then set my smaller pot with the stock in the ice bath. Once the ice bath has warmed, remove the cooling stock and refereshteh ice bath. I will repeate this 2-3 times. The stock should now be cool enough to cover and set in the fridge to finish cooling or to be divided for storage. Stock will keep for 5 days in the fridge or about 6 months in the freezer.

STEP SIX

Divide your stock into appropriate containers for storage. I use 3 and 1.5 ounce silicone baby food containers to freeze my stock and then I pop them out and put them in bags. I can fill about 8 trays worth with 1 pot of stock. I just store the rest of the stock in the fridge and empty and refill my containers each time they freeze. I cannot recommend silicone baby food freezer containers highly enough. I think they work so much better than ice cube trays or plastic quart containers. These are like bags of gold in my freezer.

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NOTES ABOUT INGREDIENTS AND VARIATIONS:

• Salt: I add a tiny bit of salt to my stock because I believe that salt should be layered in and build complexity along the way. That said, I only add a small amount of salt to make a low sodium stock because I don't want to accidentally over-salt anything I'm adding the stock to.

• Garlic: I don't add garlic to my chicken stock. I love garlic, but I love to add it fresh to anything that I'm making. You can add garlic to yours, but I just feel like it makes my stock taste a little bitter and overpowers the sweet onion and sweet chicken flavors

• Browning your Veggies Before Cooking: If you would like a browner/toastier tasting stock, please feel free to brown your veggies in the bottom of the pot with a tablespoon of oil before adding your chicken, herbs, and water. I like this method for making chicken soup, but I find that not browning the veggies leaves their flavor a little gentler and makes for a more versatile stock.

• Roasting your Chicken bones before using: You can absolutely do this, but I'd save this kind of labor for when the weather is cold and you're making soup.

• Free Range Corn Fed Chickens: If I can find them, I really like to buy chickens that are free range and cornfed, their fat has a nice yellow color (although, like egg yolks, that can be faked by adding marigolds).

• Stock vs Broth: Stock is technically made of bones and a broth is made of meat and bones... This has some of the meat removed part way through. Call it what you like.

• Onion Skins: the reason people leave onion skin on when making stock is to add color!

• Fat Cap: I leave the fat on my chicken stock because there's not that much fat in chicken (as compared to pork or beef), and a little fat adds to the flavor. If you want a clear broth, you can remove the fat cap after your stock cools in the fridge and the fat can be saved for roasting potatoes or root veggies.

• Using Chicken Bones vs Whole Chicken: In the winter, when I'm roasting chicken every few weeks, I will freeze the chicken carcasses. When I do this I actually don't pick my chickens completely clean after roasting. I like to have a bit of the meat to flavor my stock! When I have 2-3 carcasses I will make stock. If I don't feel like I have enough meat left on those carcasses, I'll add a chicken breast or some chicken wings to the pot as well. I don't usually roast chickens in the summer, so if I need stock when it's hot out, I like to use a whole chicken and then remove the breast and thigh meat half way through so that we can have chicken salad for dinner.