Homemade Chicken Stock

Store bought stock is great, it involves no work, other than opening a box, and pouring it into your pot. What’s not to love about that? As great as the store bought chicken stock is, it lacks the depth of flavor you get when you make a homemade stock.  Although you gain flavor from making a stock at home, it does take time, even if you use a pressure cooker. If you are going to make this chicken stock, then do it when you have a few hours to lay around the house. Although this isn’t something you need to check very often, it does require time to simmer. This particular chicken stock is one of my favorite methods of making chicken stock, mainly because I get to make use of something that would normally get thrown out–the left over carcass of a roasted chicken. You read that correctly, this chicken stock is made using the carcass of a roast chicken.  I normally add the chicken carcass, and the bones from the thigh and leg bones, I just pick the meat off of them and add them to the pot.  If you’d like a more potent chicken flavor you can add a few raw legs into the pot as well, but I find that it’s not necessary, if you simmer this stock long enough it will be full of flavor. Tomorrow I will show you another way to make chicken stock, which I learned from Modernist Cuisine, stay tuned.

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Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 3-4 hours

Ingredients: 1 Roast Chicken carcass

1 cup of organic carrots diced

1 cup of organic celery diced

1 large brown onion diced

4 sprigs of organic thyme

2 large cloves of garlic sliced

7 cups of cold water

1 Tablespoon of olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

Directions:  Add the oil to a stock pan or pressure cooker, add in garlic and onion, and cook until onions turn translucent about 5-7 minutes.  Add in carrots and celery, and cook for another 5 minutes.   Add in the carcass of the chicken and any additional bones that you have saved, add in the thyme Add in the cold water,   Bring stock up to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 3-4 hours.  When I cook this on the stove I check it every 45 minutes. After about 3.5 hours on the stove this stock, should be nice and flavorful, but the longer you cook it, the more concentrated it becomes and thus more flavorful. After the flavor is where you want it, turn off the fire, allow to cool to room temp, you can remove the fat that has formed on top of the stock at this point, then strain the stock through a sieve.  If you are doing this in a pressure cooker, which I recommend, after adding the water to the pot, close the pot, lock the lid and bring up to pressure, lower the heat once the pot has pressurized, and cook undisturbed for 2 hours. Turn off the heat, then depressurize your pot according to the manufacturers instructions, remove lid, and allow the stock to cool to room temperature.  Strain the stock through a sieve and freeze in an airtight container. This recipe makes about 4.5 cups of stock, I split it in half and freeze it. It makes it easier when I have a recipe that requires only 2 cups of stock. The remaining half cup of stock, I freeze in ice cube trays, and once frozen, I seal those in a ziplock type bag.  One ice cube of stock is about  tablespoon of stock, great to  make sauces with.