Homemade Chicken Stock

[Ms.Huxtable]

bouche and I go through a lot of chicken stock in our house. It's the basis of great soups, sauces, rices, etc.

Well this past weekend we decided to save ourselves some money and sodium intake and make our own!

bouche bought a huge stock pot and we found a great place for chicken bones. Kowloon Market on Somerset sells 3 chicken carcasses for $2.00. We bought 6.

For every chicken carcass we put 1 litre of water and I added an extra litre for good measure. 6 chicken bodies, 7 litres of water. I brought this to a very light boil and then turned it down to simmer for 30 minutes, skimming off the scum that rose to the top every now and then.

After 30 minutes the scum stopped appearing and at that point I added a few ginger slices, some cloves of garlic and two celery stocks and simmered for 3 more hours.

I strained the broth through a fine strainer and refrigerated overnight.

In the morning I divided the broth into portion sizes that are most convenient for us, 2 cups in each freezer bag and placed them in the freezer. We got 20 baggies from this batch.

40 cups of broth cost us about $8.00! I haven't made anything with it yet, but the smell told me it's going to be damn good.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

I heard mike woke up in the middle of the night, went to the fridge and drink a cup of it

[d_rawk]

This has gotta be one of my favourite subjects. I'm big on the homemade stock and have a few chicken carcasses in the freezer right now leftover from various roast chickens. Thanks for the tip off about Kowloon Market, Ms. Hux! That's awesome.

Lately the way that I do it is to save the trimmings and various bits from carrots, celery, onion (including the onion skins) and such when I'm preparing them for other things and add them to a big freezer bag. Or if I've got some veggies that are just starting to get past their prime, I'll throw those in the bag in the freezer as well.

I save all the bones, carcasses, etc..

This way, stock costs me nothing, and I feel better about not having wasted things. It's frugal, and it's delish.

When I'm feeling more extravagant, I'll buy an organic chicken or two from the organic farmer's market and use the bones from those. Every second week the beef lady shows up, so if you email her beforehand, you can get a good bunch of beef bones on the cheap too, for beef stock.

For the not-so-squeamish, you can sometimes find (decidedly non-organic) chicken feet at Hartman's and probably a number of other places as well. Helpful if you're having trouble getting your stock to gel.

[Ms.Huxtable]

Yup, that's a great idea d_rawk. I think we'll have to start saving our veggie trimmings in the freezer for stock as well.

Kowloon has all sorts of other body parts suitable for stock, chicken feet, ox tail, beef bones, etc. They also have fish, shell fish, etc. should you want to try making seafood stock. They are so cheap it feels like stealing.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

Beef lady?!?!?!!

BOING!

[fluffhead77]

another great trick is to roast the bones(carcass) and a carrot and onion or two in the oven prior to putting it into the stock pot with the water.

You'll end up with a slightly thicker stock and it'll have a richer, fuller flavour

[Ms.Huxtable]

That makes sense. I'm definitely doing that next time. Good one Fluffy.

[fluffhead77]

it pays to have a chef in the family

[d_rawk]

Roasting is great. I usually end up using a mixture of roasted bones and uncooked bones (and uncooked fiddly bits like keel bones with some meat on them left over from butterflying chickens)

You can leech some extra minerals outta the bones by adding some vinegar (I use raw ACV) to the water. Not advisable if you're using an aluminum stock pot though, as you're liable to leech some of that out into your stock as well. Ick.

[bouche]

If I remember correctly, Kowloon's sells the chicken carcasse at 3 for $1. That means, with the 3 dollar freezer baggies 2 dollar chicken and free water, 7-8 quarts cost only $5

Who wants to have a soup party?

[meggo]

Who wants to have a soup party?

Yeah baby! I've been waiting my whole life for a soup party

[^-- says drawk, under the guise of meggo]

Edited August 9, 2006 by Guest

[Davey Boy 2.0]

isn't that why you got the hot tub?

[d_rawk]

isn't that why you got the hot tub?

:laugh:

7-8 quarts cost only $5

And actually, with a short simmer like 4 hours, you can do double duty on the bones. I've done 12, 8 and 6 hours (and my first 4 hours tonight, but haven't tasted it yet ... it's chilling out in a sink full of ice at the moment).

I'm favouring the shorter simmers over the longer these days because of the tendency with the longer towards the formation of MSG. You can easily squeeze two batches of stock out of a single batch of bones when you're only hitting the 4 hour mark.

[bouche]

start thinking about this. a soup party would be fun. we could do little tiny bowls of about 3 or 4 different soups. Paired up with the mango/shrimp springrolls and you've got a serious party.

[bradm]

My parents used to have chili & cookie exchange parties. Each person brings enough homemade chili for two to four people, and a couple of dozen homemade cookies. The chili all gets dumped together in pots on the stove, and provides the bulk of the meal for people (along with bread, supplied by the host). The cookies get laid out on tables, and you go around, taking a few of each kind that looks good to you, so that you come to the party with a couple of dozen of one kind of cookie, but leave with half a dozen or so of a bunch of different kinds of cookies.

Aloha,

Brad

[bouche]

...and then everyone sits in a circle having a fart festival, eventually ending in with bradm's uncle Leo burning the furniture after attempting a 'blue blazer'.

[phorbesie]

it's also handy to freeze stock into ice cubes (keep a separate ice cube tray for this!) and then keep them in a freezer bag. it's not as accurately measured (though you can figure it out). then you can just use the cubes as needed!

[phorbesie]

soup is my favourite food.

[d_rawk]

me too