Chicken Stock

It's been years since I've used anything but my own homemade chicken stock in any of my recipes, and I use it in a lot of them. If you've looked at my recipe for stuffed, fried Italian rice balls you'll note that I specify it as the liquid for boiling the rice. As a matter of fact, I use my prepared chicken stock exclusively for cooking rice unless a recipe specifically requires water or some other liquid. It greatly improves the flavor of the rice. Additionally, it's the only way to go for soups or other recipes using chicken stock as a base. Try a hot and sour soup with homemade stock and you'll never even consider using canned varieties of chicken stock again.

All that having been said, the important point is the much better quality of homemade stock versus the flavored water available in cans yet labeled as "chicken stock" on the shelves at the grocery store.

Homemade chicken stock allows you to control the content and amount of additives, and it is extremely rich in gelatin, which is, for all intents and purposes totally absent in canned chicken stocks. If you need it to be sodium free, you add no salt in preparing it. If you need it to be fat free, you skim it after preparation. If you want more of either, or any other ingredients, you control what you provide.

I make stock at least twice a year, sometimes more frequently. When whole fryers/broilers or split breasts, bone-in are on sale, I buy a decent quantity, take them home and bone them myself. The only time I'm likely to use chicken-on-the-bone is for barbeque or fried chicken, so having the boneless meat on hand in the freezer is always desirable. I package the deboned breasts (whole or halved) in freezer bags, as I do the boneless meat of the whole birds. The bones and cartilage (and skins, if I'm not looking for a low fat stock) also go into freezer bags and are frozen separately. When I run out of stock, I simply retrieve the reserved bones from the freezer and I'm on my way. I usually make stock once in the early spring and again in mid-to late fall, as those are both great times of year to have the delicious odors of the simmering stock wafting through the house.

As far as freezing the stock, I usually package the cooled stock in plastic containers (margarine tubs, for example) in 1- or 2-cup proportions. That way when I need stock, it's simple to remove a container or more of the proper size(s) and thaw them out ahead of time for use in a dish to be prepared.

The ingredients for my recipe are specified in terms of a "unit" of broth, which works out to be about 2 to 3 cups, depending upon the strength of the stock you wish to make. The major differences between the stronger (2 cup unit) and the weaker (3 cup unit) are the gelatin and flavoring content and concentration. The recipe can obviously be made up in any multiple of "units" dependant largely only upon the capacity of your stockpot.

• The bones of a whole chicken (fryer or broiler), cleaned of meat while raw, less the wing bones,

  OR

• The rib and breast bones from three whole chicken breasts
• The skins from the above whole or partial chickens, if a high fat content stock is desired (optional)
• 1 quart water
• 1 rib of celery sliced diagonally, 1/2 inch
• 1/2 of a medium onion, sliced
• 1/4 tsp. salt (optional)
• 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper, or to taste (optional)
• 1/4 tsp. whole celery seed

What could be simpler than this?

Place the bones in a stock pot large enough to hold them plus the volume of water being used. Cover with the water and add the vegetables and spices desired. Bring to a boil over high heat.

Reduce heat to low or medium-low and cover. Simmer covered, for at least two hours, stirring once every thirty minutes. Remove cover and continue to simmer until total volume is reduced by 25% for weaker stock or half for stronger stock, as desired.

Cool at room temperature uncovered for about an hour, skimming as much fat from the surface as desired. The fat can be reserved as schmaltz, if desired, or it may be discarded.

The broth now needs to be strained either once or twice, depending upon the clarity you desire in your finished stock. The first straining is required simply to remove the bones and vegetable matter remaining suspended in the broth. This is accomplished simply by ladling the stock from the stockpot into an eight inch seive suspended over another metal vessel large enough to hold just the broth. Any materials caught in the sieve can be discarded, although when I used to have pets, I found that the fully cooked bones were so soft at this point that they could be run through the blender with a small amount of the broth. The resulting "mousse" I then refrigerated and both the cats and the dog loved it as an addition to their food. It's rich in calcium and protein and the fully cooked bones virtually fall apart, presenting no hazard to the digestive tract in terms of splintering.

If superclear stock is desired, a second straining can be done while the broth is still hotter than room temperature (i.e. before the gelatin begins to congeal). The same process is used as with the first straining, with two exceptions -

• Either a finer sieve, or a cloth (cheese cloth or percale) filter must be used to strain out larger particles than the sieve itself is capable of restraining
• As the bottom of the stock pot is reached, care must be taken to ladle the broth from the pot without disturbing any fine sediment that settles to the bottom as the broth sits. This "muddy" stock will need to be either discarded or reserved separately for another purpose.

At this point, the stock can either be packaged in individual freezer containers and cooled further to room temperature for immediate freezing, or it may be refrigerated overnight in closed containers (I keep a few half gallon jars with lids on hand for this.) If refrigerated, the gelatinous stock should be repacked in individual freezer containers and frozen within a day or two.

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Last Updated 11/07/96 by JDB