The other night I came across a post from a local Foodie Blogger whom I've started reading. She posted a video on making your own chicken stock (or broth) that was well made. For the last year or so I too have been making my own chicken stock that I freeze and pull out for dishes like risotto, chicken noodle soup, etc. I thought I would share my chicken stock process as I do things a little different than Suzie.
The biggest difference is that she used a whole chicken in her stock where my stock is waste protein only. When I have lots of chicken stock on hand, I will collect all the bones, skin and cartilage of chicken I break down for use or roasts we make. I toss them in a bag or wrap them in tinfoil and freeze them, I'm not worried about freezer-burn. I also keep a couple pounds of cleaned chicken feet from Shani's Farm in the freezer that I use. When I use onion, garlic or celery I scrub the skins before preparing and keep all the scraps and peelings in ice cream containers in the freezer as well. Any other veg scraps may work too, I'm not sure. The really important thing is to make sure it's clean, any grit brought in from the vegs may end up suspended in your stock.
When making stock, I try to start first thing in the morning. I'll start by broiling all the loose bones, carcasses and chicken feet until very brown on baking sheets or in a shallow roasting pan. Avoid burning but flavour seems to come from the roasting so I get them as dark as I can. As the pans of bones brown I put them in a pot, including the fat and lightly scrape the crusty bits as well. I usually have several "trays" of bones and carcass to roast before the stock making starts. I don't worry about adding fat or whatever to the pot before hand as I'll strain and skim everything out at the end.
All the frozen produce scraps go in the pot. Depending on how many onion skins and garlic scraps are available, I may add more (scrubbed) whole onions or garlic cloves. I'll toss in some bay leaves (not just one, I use a large stock pot) and whole peppercorns. That's about it. Fill it with water to just cover everything and bring it up to a simmer. Throughout the day I'll try to skim the "foam" off the top and give the whole mix a good stir.
A couple hours before the end of the day it's time to start wrapping it up. I remove it from the heat and start pulling bones, soggy chicken and produce out of the pot and into my salad spinner ("waste not, want not"). A quick spin gets a little more liquid out of it and I discard the waste. Some people may try to pull the edible chicken out here, I don't bother. Because I only use carcass and feet, any edible chicken is almost shredded and I don't have the patience to separate it.
The liquid goes through a fine sieve to remove as much solid particles as I can and then into empty ice cream containers. The liquid is usually steaming hot at this point so the containers get a lid and go outside on the deck to cool before being refrigerated overnight. Do not freeze it as it is, there is a very important step left to do tomorrow.
First thing next morning we need to remove the fat. As the liquid cooled overnight in the fridge, most of the fat in the containers floated to the top and you should see a white-ish greasy layer on top. I skim this layer off as best I can down to the pure stock beneath. You'll see the colour and texture change at the layer where the fat ends and the stock begins. I discard the fat but I suppose that could be used for something too if you wanted.
From here I start dividing the stock into its permanent homes, container size depending on how much I want to freeze together. You use anything from ice cream containers to ice cube trays. I often have to reheat it a little at this point because the consistency can be like a thick Jello thanks to the chicken feet.
It's a big job, but that's how I make my stock. Quality stock is expensive (not the boxed liquid, that's garbage), but mine uses literally the waste from other meals and from that I get about 6 litres of good stock.
!Foodie
No comments:
Post a Comment