I make chicken stock every couple of weeks and am looking for other ways to use it. It’s fine with me if you want to talk about other kinds of stock (beef, fish, etc.). Soup recipes are welcome, too, although I’m more interested in other uses. Aside from soups, gravy and sauces, I know of at least two ways to use chicken stock. In one, you use it to finish cooking pasta, and the other is stewed potatoes with peppers and sausage.
I’ve just made a batch of chicken stock and, on a whim, threw in some cardomom pods and allspice berries. Still cooking and smells very good!
Oh, right, I forgot about risotto, paella and other rice dishes. Couscous is another. First time I’ve heard of hot pot; will have a look online. Thanks! Any more?
I make chicken stock on a regular basis too. I save it in quart size freezer bags and when I use it I cut the bag away and thaw the frozen stock in a pan.
One staple dish I make with the stock is Chicken Piccata. For Piccata I don’t just thaw the stock, I simmer it down and reduce to about 1/4 of its original volume or less. For this reason I never add salt to my stock initially, so it doesn’t get too salty by reducing it.
Then I thin out some chicken breasts, either by butterflying or pounding, lightly coat them in a little flour and seasonings, and fry them in a mix of olive oil and butter. Remove when they’re nicely browned on the outside (don’t have to be cooked through at this point), cook up some chopped garlic (I like to add red chopped bell pepper for color too sometimes), and then pour in some white wine to deglaze the pan and make a nice fond.
When the wine has reduced some, I add the reduced chicken stock with some quartered artichoke hearts and capers and add the chicken back in to finish cooking in the sauce. I add the juice of a lemon at the end and serve the sauce and the chicken over spaghetti noodles. Oh yeah, don’t forget generous amounts of grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano! The reduced chicken stock makes for a very rich delicious sauce.
Hmmm…non soup, non stew, non sauce uses? That’s really narrowing the field. Rice (or other grain or grain-type like pasta usage) is about all I could think of that purely fits those limitations.
I’ll give you a sauce or sauce-adjacent use, in case you’re looking for ways of finding more space for your stock. Have you ever cooked it all the way down until it becomes a glace? Basically, assuming you’ve started with a stock that has plenty of bones in it (which defines a stock, anyway), you can cook that puppy down to about 1/8-1/10 or so of its original volume and it should become an uber-concentrated chicken glaze (known as glace de viande, or “meat glaze.”) You’re looking for the consistency of a light syrup, such that it coats your spoon or when you drag your spoon across the bottom of your pot, a trail temporarily forms .
Pour it into an ice cubs tray, freeze, then take out the ice cubes and put them in a zip lock bag for future use. You basically have “Better Than Better Than Bouillon.” You can reconstitute it at an 8-10:1 ratio (depending on how far you cooked it down) when you need stock for a recipe. But better yet, it can be used almost full strength to deglaze a pan for a nice pan sauce. Add a little wine if you like, a knob of butter, and a cube to a pan where meat has been seared or cooked, and you’ve got a lovely restaurant-quality pan sauce for your meat.
solost and pulykamell, thanks for taking the time to describe those recipes! I’ve taken note and will be trying them. Using stock for stews also interests me, but I guess there’s not much mystery there, as it just comes down to using stock instead of water.
Mods, I think something’s wrong here. In the upper right-hand corner of my screen, I see that my posts in this thread are attributed to me and to what_exit, who I think is a user or member here. Is this a new glitch?
Stock is used in so many ways, this is kind of a crazy question. You can boil it down and freeze it small as pulykamell suggests but I have room in the freezer so I usually just freeze it as is in ~2 cup bags.
I usually have enough room to freeze (I have the freezer compartment of my fridge, and a stand-along freezer in the basement), but the concentrated stock cubes are more often used for sauces and “meating up” dishes that could use a concentrated addition of meaty/umami flavor. Like if you make a stew and it’s just missing a little oomph, a concentrated cube of glace is helpful.
Don’t forget that also extends to Cajun things like jambalaya, etouffe, or gumbo and to Indian dishes like biryani. Tomorrow is jambalaya day at my house and home-made turkey stock is going in rather than the more traditional chicken stock.
Various Mideastern dishes made with rice or couscous are another whole cuisine you can explore for years.
If you’re careful (acidity matters!) you can use stock when making a number of savory baked goods. In the same way that you can sometimes sub apple juice for water in sweeter breads and pie crusts, you can do the same for savory pie crusts and the like. If I can find it, I’ll dig up my wife’s Red Lobster inspired cheesey biscuits. It adds a certain depth of flavor, as well as mouthfeel without adding a lot of fat.
Other than replacing water, a lot of options where you’d be using milk or cream in cooking a dish can also sub out a chicken stock, but that would generally be in soups/stews/etc that have been mentioned earlier.
I use chicken stock to reconstitute commercially prepared mole paste. I take meat from a rotisserie chicken, sautée half a large white onion, add 12oz of chicken stock and 3-4 tablespoons of mole paste and stir over medium heat. In minutes, the mole paste thickens the chicken stock into a rich, flavorful sauce. Serve over black beans and rice.
