Made Chicken Stock
September 07, 2011 Filed in: Cooking
"Only the pure in heart can make a good soup."
--Ludwig van Beethoven
As you know, I cleaned out the freezer the other day. I wanted to make more room today, so I decided to take all the bags of stock ingredients we have and make some stock. I had never made stock before, but luckily, J had so I could rely on her expertise (she teased about how complicated it was, because it's really not too bad at all).
I started by taking out all the bags of chicken bones and spare vegetables we had been storing in the freezer and laying them out.
Because we had so many, I had to get the giant stockpot from the cupboard. I started emptying all the bags into the pot.
I took our pitcher of filtered water and started filling the pot with it. I had to refill the pitcher several times before I was able to get the water line above the bones at the top.
From there, I started bringing the pot to a boil. Because there was so much in the pot, it took a while to get it to its boiling point.
Once it reached a boil, we set it to simmer. Every 20 minutes or so I would check if there was any gross looking foam on the top and skim it off.
When the stock started looking pretty good, I started removing the pieces in the pot with the goal of separating the liquids from the solids.
Then, we strained the rest into a smaller pot. Even though the stock was unsalted, it still had good flavor. We haven't decided how we'll use it yet, but if we were making a soup or sauce, salt or other herbs or spices could be added later.
This was fairly simple but a very worthwhile skill to learn. Hopefully soon, I'll try to reduce it down so we can make it into stock cubes to add to recipes later. There are so many applications for chicken stock in cooking, so we packed it up for later use.
Even though it takes a little while, it was cool to go through the motions of making stock and realizing it's not too complicated. I freed up a bunch of room in our freezer and I have something delicious to show for it. It feels like a win-win situation!
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