I cut up a chicken (it was a dead one) and put it in the oven with some Shake’N’Bake, but I had a lot of meaty bones left. So I put them in a pot of water with some salt, and am boiling them. I don’t have any onions, celery, carrots, etc. I’m just boiling the bones in salted water to make a stock. The heat is on low.
How long do I simmer it? What do I do with it once it’s done?
You simmer it as long as you like, at least a couple of hours.
You can use it as a soup base. Or to make rice pilaf. All you need for Rice Pilaf is chicken stock and rice and spices to taste.
Yup, that’s all you need. Boil the bones for a couple few hours, remove the bones, pour it into a storage container & freeze it for whenever you need broth. I love homemade chicken stock.
Well, vegetables really really would have helped, but you’ll still get a stock without 'em. It kinda depends on how much water you put them in. Was it just to cover, or a lot more? Anyhow, I would simmer from 4–8 hours, the longer the better, especially given the lack of vegetables. And when I say simmer, I mean there should be bubbles coming up just every few seconds. Not a boil. Afterwards, I just ladle the stock through a cheesecloth over a colander and refrigerate the resulting mixture. After it cools, you skim the residual fat that forms atop the stock and use it or freeze it.
Oh, yeah, taste it when it’s done. If it tastes too thin, you can reduce it by simply boiling the moisture off. If you reduce it enough, you could get something called a glace de viande (meat glaze) which is a very concentrated, gelatanous stock. A quart of stock boils down to a few tablespoons of glace de viande.
How to use? You can use it as a soup base, you can use it in sauces, you can use it as a poaching liquid, you can cook rice in it…there’s so many culinary uses for stock I can’t even begin to name all of them.
Never salt a stock, always salt the dish that the stock is going into. The reason being you never know what your going to use the stock for so it’s quite possible that you have oversalted, especially if your turning it into a demi-glace or glace de viande in which case it will taste like a salt lick.
I make industrial sized portions of stock every 3 months or so and freeze them into ice cubes. So much better than store bought stuff.