Calling all cooks! Help me make really good stock

In My Humble Opinion
1

I cook quite a bit. I like to cook. I really do. But I have a terrible confession to make. I’ve never made stock. I haven’t made all that many dishes that require it, and when I have, I have often used (hangs head in shame) store-bought cans of broth. I know, I know. I throw myself on your mercy.

So can any of you experienced Doper cooks help me out? What do I need to do to make a really good stock? I know what stock IS, and I know (in theory) what’s supposed to go into it, but how do I go about preparing it? For example, for chicken stock – do I roast the bones & scraps or do I sautee them? How much water do I use? Do I add veggies? Spices? What are the proper techniques for straining and reducing? How long can I freeze it for?

Any help you can give me will set me on the path to salvation, and if you show me the light I will promise never to buy canned broth again.

2

Roasting is only necessary for a brown stock (beef stock). Which I seldom make because butchers now CHARGE for beef bones they used to give away for free, the bastards. And the whole idea of stock is that you’re getting something for nothing, right?

Okay, I make chicken stock EVERY TIME I have chicken for dinner. Say you’re making a sauteed, broiled, or grilled chicken in parts, right? Instead of buying pieces of chicken, or a quartered chicken, buy the whole bird. It’s cheaper, anyway.

Cutting it up: Use the Guide in any basic cookbook. My way is to take off the wings first, then the legs, then split the breast. Keep a large saucepan or small stockpot handy. Now. All the stuff you don’t usually eat, you throw into the pot! Wing tips, backbone, skin, fat, neckbone, gizzards, heart. NOT the liver. Put all the nice skinned parts (wings, breasts, drumsticks, thighs) you’ll have for dinner aside. Throw the liver into the bag of livers in the freezer that you’re saving for the next time you make Dirty Rice.

Okay, run cold water into the pot of Chicken Garbage to amply cover. Put it on a high flame and bring to a boil. Now turn down to a very low simmer. You can skim if you want to, if you’re the sort of tea-sipping pansy who likes his consomme clear. Me, I don’t bother.

After the bones and skin and fat simmer for anywhere from fifteen mintures to an hour, you can add vegetables. I never use GOOD vegetables, I use whatever’s left over from the veggies I’m preparing for dinner. The onion ends (AND skin! Onion skins give the stock a lovely color), the carrot peelings, the celery tops, the wilted green parts of the scallions, the parsley stems. All this junk is fine. It’s full of flavor which you’ll want to slowly bleed into your stock. Then you’ll callously throw it all away. Which you would have done with it anyway.

Now, just leave it all simmering while you make the real dinner. And while you eat dinner. And while you wash up. Okay, you can turn it off now. By just before bedtime it’ll be cool enough for you to scoop out the solids and trash them, and pour the stock through a sieve into another saucepan, or a Tupperware container, or whatever. This you refrigerate. Or put out on the porch, if it’s cold out.

Tomorrow, the chicken fat has risen to the top and solidified. Lift this off and put it in a jar in the fridge. You can use it for cooking later. Now pour the de-fatted stock into quart-size ziploc freezer bags (label and date them), and lay them flat in the freezer. They’ll last a good 4-6 months. But you’ll have used it up before then…this time of year you’ll want it not only for soups but for stews, sauces, gravies, etc.

Stock. It makes itself, basically. And gives you that great thrifty feeling.

3

As for spices…I used to put in whole peppercorns, but I don’t bother any more. Because stock is there to be made INTO something else, and that something else always gets seasoned. For the same reason, don’t bother to salt your stock.

Oh, yeah…if you want to make brown stock, it’s a much more expensive, greasier business, and it has to cook a LOT longer than good ol’ chicken stock.

Get about 4-6 pounds of beef bones from your butcher. Many experts say that it’s not worth doing this unless you use actual MEAT as well, but even a few pounds of the cheapest beef make this proposition into a ten-dollar pot of Meat Water instead of the five-dollar one you’ll have with just bones.

Put the bones in a roasting pan and into a 450 oven for 20 minutes. Take em out, turn them, and add two halved onions and carrots to the pan (don’t bother to peel them). Roast for another 20 minutes, until everything’s browned nicely.

Now scrape it all into your BIGGEST stockpot, deglaze the bottom of the pan with some hot water, and cover it all with cold water. Bring to a boil. Turn down to a low simmer.

Now, with chicken stock, you have a credible broth after as little as an hour of simmering. With vegetable stock, it’s ready in a HALF hour. With this stuff, plan on at least seven hours. Add the vegetable ends (and a BAY LEAF!) an hour or two before you plan to turn off the heat.

De-fat as you did the chicken stock. Don’t save the fat, though, 'cause it’s really disgusting.

4

Unless, [sub]and of course, no one ever would, in these healthy times of ours[/sub] you take a glop of beef-fat, toss it in a skillet, (cast iron if possible), heat it, then, once it starts to change color, toss a slice or three of bread in. Toast/fry 'till bread is cooked and soaked up the fat.

MMmmm-Mmmmm Good! (But the Surgeon General would not approve. It’s still wonderful though.)

Fenris

5

Ike gave some excellent advice so I have only a few minor things to add.

Veggie Stock: Fill stock pot to halfway with whatever veggies you like. Do NOT use broccoli, but most others work great. Onions, celery, carrots, tomatoes (unless you don’t want a tomato-based red soup!)etc. Cover with water – so water is about two inches above top of veggies. Simmer at a low boil until stock reduces by 50%. Preserve as Ike recommends.

Seafood Stock: Next time you’re cooking shrimp, crawfish, lobster, crab legs, etc.: the shells of any crustacean can be used to make an excellent seafood stock, suitable for bisque, jumbalaya, gumbo or chowder. Fish bones & skin can also be added, or washed oyster or clam shells.

Beef/Chicken Stock: do what Ike sez… only simmer for two hours or until stock is reduced by 50%.

Spices/Herbs: rule of thumb use twice as much fresh herbs as dried. Or half as much dried herbs as fresh. Add herbs in LAST, no matter what you’re cooking, so you don’t boil the flavor and nutrients right out of your stock. I add herbs in only above five minutes before cooking stops, no matter what I’m making.

Let me know if you need soup recipes. I’m the master soup maker around these here parts! Will be glad to share… (Although most of my recipes are vegetarian, you can adapt and add whatever mammals and/or birds you like to eat!)

Side Note: My step monster and gramma always taught me that the flavor in foods comes from the fat. This is not true. A Chef friend of mine (a graduate of Johnson and Wales chef’s school) taught me that the real flavor in foods comes from the bones, more specifically the marrow. So, anytime you cook with the bones added – that’s where all the special flavor comes from!

6

Wow, you just reminded me that there’s a lovely turkey carcass in my freezer. It’s been in there for three weeks or so. I meant to make a stock with it that weekend, but of course that never happened. Do you think it’s too late to use it?

7

DeskM: I’D use it if I were you. But I wouldn’t let my wife see me doing it, she’s a fusspot about bacteria.

Nuts, you’re gonna let it come to a boil, right? That’ll kill any live vermin.

8

Thanks for all the info, Ike. You rock!

9

A tip I got from the China Moon cookbook - chicken stock seems to taste more “chickeny” if you toss in several 1/16" slices of ginger root (don’t bother to peel it). Oddly, you don’t taste the ginger - the stock just tastes meatier.

And no one has mentioned mushroom stock, one of my favorites. If you cut the stems off your mushrooms anyway, toss them in water and you can brew up a very tasty stock. It’s even better with some onion peels.

10

Handy hint: You can save peelings/cuttings/carrot & celery tops in a freezer bag until you have enough to make a large pot. I don’t eat many onions so when I do buy one or two at the store, I scoop up an extra couple handfuls of the skins and throw them in the bag too. (I’m guess you could even fill up a bag with just skins and not even BUY an onion!)

I boil up about 7 or 8 cups at a time (large, LARGE pot), then store them in a set of Ball 8oz jelly jars with snap-on lids I got at a thrift store. I can yank a jar out of the freezer whenever anything calls for a cup of broth, nuke it for a minute, dump it in the pot and stick the jar and lid in the dishwasher.

11

In the same spirit as voguevixen’s storage tip, if I’m making stock and already have a decent supply in the freezer, I’ll pour the cooled, de-fatted stock into ice-cube trays and freeze it. Then I transfer the frozen stock cubes into a freezer bag. That way using an even smaller amount of stock to flavor something is a simple matter of grabbing a few cubes out of the freezer and tossing them in.

12

The only caveat I’d toss into Ike’s stock pot is that I don’t include the chicken skin, because of the high concentration of fat. I have cholesterol problems, and I just don’t think it’s worth it. As Dogzilla points out, the flavour comes from the bones, anyway.

(I know, I know - Ike says he skims the fat when it cools - I’ve found you can never get all the fat even so, and just try to avoid putting it in to start with. As for Ike’s comment that he uses the chicken fat later - well, what do you expect from someone who bought lard?)

13

There are great tips on this page!

I usually buy boneless, skinless chicken breasts but have been trying to save money lately. Buying the whole bird makes a lot more sense - I just wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do with the rest of it.

Ike, the stock directions look great. I’ll be making some soon.

Rackensack - you solved a problem I’ve had - I don’t like defrosting a big container of chicken stock when I only want a little bit of it. Ice cube tray, here we come!

Thanks!

Tibs

14

rack: I’m probably slowly poisoning myself with heinous microbes, but when I need a half-cup or cup of stock for a recipe, I just toss the frozen quart-size ziploc into a bowl of water and go about the rest of the cooking. In 10-15 minutes I open the bag and pour off all the melted stock into a measuring cup, then re-seal the bag and put it back into the freezer. (I use enough stock that I never have an opened bag like this around for more than a few days.)

Tiburon: If you only like white meat, buy breasts with the bone and skin intact…cheaper than ones where the work’s done for you, and it’s pretty darn easy to debone a chicken breast. You can keep the skin and bone in a freezer bag (in the freezer) until you’ve done this a few times and have accumulated a couple of pounds of detrius, then make your stock.

jti: Hey! If you chill the stock completely, you should be able to lift the fat off in one firm yellow-white disc! And if you don’t keep rendered chicken fat around, how do you make your potato latkes, huh?

(My daughter’s allergic to dairy products, so I rarely cook with butter. And while olive oil is fine stuff, one pines for a change occasionally. Hash browns sauteed in chicken or duck fat are really, REALLY good!)