Chicken stock
From Recipe Wiki
Many recipes in this collection reference chicken stock. While it is possible to buy cans of something purporting to be chicken stock, most of the time using the canned stuff will result in less-than-tastylicious food.
Making your own chicken stock is easy, inexpensive, and strongly suggested for taste reasons. Here is a super-basic recipe for chicken stock that will serve you well enough to be going on with. It's within the grasp of anyone who has enough kitchen fu to make box mac-n-cheese. (If you already know how to make beautiful, clear stock with an appropriate bouquet garnee and mirepoix, what are you doing reading this?)
Tools:
- ziplock bags
- large pot, six quarts or so
- stove
- colander or strainer
- freezer space
- water
- a chicken, ready-to-cook
1. Procure an entire chicken. It can be cut up "for frying" or whole "for roasting" -- either one will work.
2. Put all the chicken parts (except for the gross inside bits, which are tucked inside the "for roasting" chicken and sometimes included underneath the usual "for frying" chicken parts where they lurk as an offal surprise for the unsuspecting) in a large pot and add water to cover. INCLUDE skin and bones. You cannot make acceptable chicken stock with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. You *can* make acceptable stock from legs-n-thighs but then you have an awful lot of boiled leg-n-thigh meat to eat.
3. Cook this large pot of chicken-and-water on a slow boil for two, maybe three hours. Check on it occasionally to make sure it's not boiling over or running out of liquid.
4. When the chicken parts are falling apart and the meat is totally dry and stringy, it's done. Remove the pot from heat.
5. Pour the stock-n-chicken through a colander to strain out the chicken parts. (The chicken meat may be used for enchilada meat, for curry meat, for chicken salad, for cat food, whatever. This is about stock, not about boiled-until-bland chicken parts.) Put the stock into the fridge to cool it off. I DO NOT suggest skimming the fat off. There isn't that much fat and if it's all removed, the stock will have a lot less flavor and mouth-feel.
6. When the stock is cool, bag it in ziplocks and freeze it for later. I use quart size freezer bags and put two cups of stock in each one. If you put the bags flat to freeze them, the frozen stock will stack neatly in your freezer or can be stood on end (like books in a shelf) for efficient use of space. Flat-frozen stock also thaws a lot faster than lump-frozen stock.
Finally, if you simply must use the canned stuff, Swanson's is less sucky than the store brand. It's still worse than real chicken broth, but it's better than water.
