This is exactly, almost word-for-word what I do.
Often though, I’ll take this basic stock and add in whatever I have lying around.
Last time I had a surplus of broccoli, so that went in with some stilton, then from blender to freezer.
Great thing about soup is it’s nearly impossible to get wrong!
Yeah, the boiled carcass of roasted chicken is a kitchen staple for me. I never much cared about chicken noodle soup until I started making it this way, and now I get the love for it.
A few weeks ago I started thinking about the Dinty Moore Beef Stew that I loved as a kid, and longing for it while suspecting that if I tried it now I’d think it tasted like dog food. So I took a day and made beef stew from scratch, including buying beef bones to roast and then make into stock. It was absolutely incredible, and now I want to eat it all the time.
Yeah, but I know better. Brain farts seem to happen more often these days. It’s also been about 12 years since my ‘soups, stews and sauces’ course. 
I get my cooking terms wrong all the time. It doesn’t matter if it tastes good in the end.
Put EVERYTHING from that carcass into the pot when you boil it up. Including any uneaten skin, leftover juices and drippings, and cartilage, as well as the bones.
Yes, Dinty Moore stew does taste like dog food. Or it did a couple of years ago. I remember loving it as a kid, as well.
Incidentally, once you’ve soaked and drained dried beans, use stock/broth for the cooking liquid, even if you put some sort of smoked pork product in with the beans.
I usually leave out the skin, as I don’t feel like having to skim the fat off later, and it doesn’t really add much in the way of flavor. Also, if one doesn’t know what they are doing and lets the brew boil excessively, the fat becomes emulsified and impossible to remove, resulting in a greasy mouth feel. YMMV
[Sean Connery]I made shome with your mother lasht night, Trebeck![SC}
I use a gravy/grease separator, because I’m not fond of skimming the fat off, either. If I can’t find the separator (we moved recently and I can’t find a LOT of my stuff), I’ll let the broth cool so that the fat will solidify, and then pick it off.
Yeah, if I’m making broth, I leave everything on, then skim the next day. I have a gravy/fat separator, but it’s not terribly big, and skimming the next day after the fat solidifies seems a lot neater and more precise to me. Plus I like throwing in the skins because I save the rendered fat for frying onions in.
Made Buffalo wings for Thanksgiving work pot luck and, since I’m both cheap and poor, I bought the very cheap jumbo bag of whole wings from Western Beef. While I cooked the wings, I tossed the wing tips in a big pot of boiling water into which I had also thrown in all my old veggies. Some dried out carrots, slick green onions, limp and wilted celery stalks, 2 soft homegrown poblano peppers and the last of my frost nipped oregano and basil plants. Like I said, I’m poor. No way was I throwing out all them veggies.
At the end of the day I strained it into a 2 quart jar and stuck it in the fridge. For Thanksgiving I had what could only be called Chicken Jelly. It set up like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was dropping spoonfuls of the stuff into practically everything I made for Thanksgiving. That was the best stuff EVER and it was just tips of a two pound bag of wings.
Whenever I have a turkey carcass, I use it to make broth. I am no chef, and I couldn’t tell you squat about the nutrition or fat content. But it’s good to use for yummy home made turkey soup! I call it broth until I add things like veggies, meat pieces, salt and other spices. Here’s how I do it: and did I mention, I’m no chef?
Take leftover turkey carcass, put in giant pot. The biggest you have.
Cover with water, or, if it floats, as much water as you can use.
Turn heat on medium-low for a few hours till it starts to actually heat up.
Turn heat to low low, cover, and forget it for a minimum of 24 hours.
If it hasn’t yet achieved a boil, increase heat- nothing drastic, and boil gently
for an hour or so.
(If the 24 time frame has made this impossible for you, keep heat on low low till
you can have some kitchen time, another 8, 12 hours, whatever.)
After boiling gently for an hour or so, (or 3, or 6, time is your friend here…)
remove from heat, and allow to cool a little.
(You will swear that a nuclear reaction occurred in the pot, it’s going to
stay hot for a LONG time)
Using tongs, pull out large bones, and other bits large enough to remove.
Cool the stock as quickly as is prudent, without causing yourself stress.
(Cool quickly in a bank of snow if you live in a cold climate)
Put the other large pot you own in the sink with a strainer in it.
Pour the broth into that, and remove what stays in the strainer.
Strain to increasingly fine meshes as it suits you.
Refrigerate that broth till the fat congeals on top, and remove as much as
you wish.
Now freeze it in smaller batches, and use those to make soup by adding
whatever you’d like. (salt)
I don’t have a separator, but I put the broth in the fridge overnight and then remove the solids the next evening when I make soup. I figure that top layer is a combination of gelatin and fat, right? Anyway, I use a very generous helping of that mess to fry the onions and celery and carrots for the soup, and it’s mighty fine.
I learned the hard way not to let the stock boil: a couple of times when I made the broth, it came out cloudy and not especially tasty. When I finally figured out that gentle simmering was a must, it was clear and delicious.
Someone told me recently that I should be wary of adding the chicken’s innards (specifically I think the liver) to the stock pot, because it adds an unpleasant flavor. Any thoughts on that? I’ve always added them, so I don’t know what difference it’d make not to do so. I don’t cook them before adding them; would that make a difference, if the chicken is roasted?
That’s what happens when the fat emulsifies; you get a cloudy stock. A low simmer, wherein an occasional bubble breaks the surface, is what is desired. That way, the fat remains separate for the most part and can either be skimmed while simmering, or removed after cooling, as mentioned. I usually skim while it’s cooking, but just find it easier to leave it out altogether.
I generally discard the liver, though sometimes I throw it in, as long as it’s fresh. In theory, it can add a bit of a “mineral” flavor, but I only think I’ve ever noticed it once. And even then, you probably wouldn’t notice it unless you were using the stock in a very plain way. If you used it to boil rice or even make chicken soup, it would probably be barely noticeable. That said, I wouldn’t try throwing in a bunch of livers just for the heck of it.
But gizzards, hearts, etc. – they’re perfectly fine, as long as they’re fresh. (Organ meats sometimes have a tendency to get an “off” flavor more quickly than the rest of the bird. If you had them in the fridge for a couple days, I’d at least check and smell them before using.) If you had a bunch of them, they could alter the flavor – I actually rather like the broth made with chicken hearts alone, but it has a distinctive flavor and odor – but just using the couple bits that come with a roasting chicken actually adds some depth to the flavor of the stock, I think.
Oh, and no reason to cook them first when making a stock from a roasted carcass, unless you really want to.
I generally only use the liver, gizzard, and heart in the soup itself, not the broth or stock. When I was a kid, it was always a treat to get the liver or heart in a bowl of chicken noodle soup.
That said, I really don’t think a single chicken liver (or two) is going to ruin a broth.
Actually, there’s a time limit, particularly if the stock boils or simmers actively for too long. Eventually, some of the flavor begins to break down and you can get a somewhat bitter taste. This is particularly bad with fish stock, which should only be simmered for a short time (most people don’t make this at home, though). Chicken stock can also be “overcooked,” particularly if using fresh chicken bones/meat and if they are actively boiled for hours. Roasted bones are reasonably forgiving, and I’ve never noticed a bad flavor when cooking a roasted carcass for a rather long time. Also, beef bones can be simmered for a LONG time.
In many cases, it’s not so much that the results will taste bad, but you may have gone past the “peak flavor” of the stock. This is also true of adding vegetables, herbs, etc. If I do add them to a stock, I don’t generally simmer them for more than an hour, so I will add them near the end. Otherwise, some of the flavors may break down, and some vegetables may even get a little bitter.
The one time period that is useful to extend is the warm-up time. Start by adding cold water to the bones, and you can allow a few hours to come to temperature. You’ll add a lot of flavor with a slow warm-up. But once you get to an active simmer, the flavors for some ingredients will only hold up so long.