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Taking stock on Sunday
The making of homemade chicken stock is appealing to me on many levels. On one level, it’s a test of basic culinary skills to make your own stock. It’s not difficult, but it is time-consuming.
But it also appeals to a kind of frugality. Here you take what most people throw away as useless—namely the chicken bones—and turn them into a golden, delicious, and unctuous delight that will provide many soups, stews, and sauces. We often cook whole chickens and I save the uncooked backbone (I prefer to butterfly my chickens) and the cooked bones after we’re done removing the meat, putting them in freezer bags. At any point in time, I have about 5 or 6 pounds of chicken bones in the chest freezer. If I don’t have enough bones, I’ll use wings or leg quarters.
Yes, I always keep a few backup boxes of chicken stock in the cabinet, just in case I run out of the homemade stuff, especially since finding three or four hours to make stock can be difficult with everything else going on. Yet, it’s so very worth it. Look at how it glows in the sunlight in that photo. That’s 24 cups or 6 quarts of the foundation of a good meal there. You should feel it in your mouth. It’s silky and smooth and exploding with flavor.
You’ll notice I’m not obsessed with clarifying it to get every last bit of herb out of it. I prefer mine to be a bit rustic and I’m not getting graded on it. What matters is that it will taste great in the final dish.
Oh and here’s the recipe I use. A few more tips: I keep a supply of half-liter water bottles in the chest freezer for rapidly cooling the stock. When I reheat it, I don’t bother defrosting. I just run the container under hot water for a few seconds to get it to release from the sides and then dump it into a pot over high heat. It won’t boil until the whole thing is melted. Once it boils, it’s ready to serve. I keep any extra in a Mason jar in the fridge.
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