Literally any of those methods would work. You’re boiling the shit out of the bones to get at their sweet sweet collagen. If you’re using raw bones, you don’t even need to roast them. Just cook them off in the bottom of your stock pot to get a nice sear and get some fond onto the bottom.
I’m genuinely not being flippant here. Stock is one of those things that seems way more involved and complicated than it has to be. You can get way more involved, but for now I’d encourage you to dump a bunch of shit in your pot and see how easy it is to get great results.
Here’s a great example of a dead simple recipe that will impress people.
Step 1) Put a supermarket rotisserie chicken carcass into a pot after you’ve enjoyed your meal.
Step 2) Follow my stock recipe.
Step 3) Strain.
Step 4) Dump some roasted veggies into the stock.
Step 5) Make some matzoh balls.
Step 6) Season to taste.
Step 7) Don’t correct people when they assume it took effort to develop the rich flavors in your soup.
Take any bones you have after you’ve eaten most of the meat and toss it into a pot. Or any bones you have that haven’t been cooked yet. Johnny Bravo gave the perfect recipe for you to try. That’s basically how I make stock. Thirding do not add salt.
Yes. That boxed stuff works in a pinch or as a convenience , but it doesn’t gel like proper stock should, nor does it taste right, in my opinion. Not a single boxed broth or stock I’ve ever had tastes like what chicken stock/broth should, IMHO, and it’s not about the saltiness.
Mrs. solost gets a rotisserie chicken every time she goes to Costco. I save all carcass bones, I’m not too careful to strip all the meat off the bones, and I freeze the carcass until I have 2 carcasses for a 6 quart instant pot. Or I do one Costco chicken carcass and a handful of raw chicken wings.
Can’t help with beef stock, since my typical beef encounters are boneless cuts like steaks or briskets.
Here’s a chicken stock thread I started a year ago in which people shared a lot of great tips, if you’re interested:
Stock cannot be prepared with bones. The right amount of bones in stock is exactly zero and no more. If it has any bones in it it’s broth, not stock. Which makes the current fad “superfood” called “bone broth” utterly redundant.
Admittedly the uninformed user base has so blurred these terms that “stock” and “broth” are mostly used interchangeably by the UNwashed Masses and their media enablers. But strictly speaking broth and stock are not the same thing; not at all.
Stock is bones. I worked in a professional kitchen (just as cleanup boy though, I mean kitchen porter) at a Michelin started restaurant. I asked and the difference between broth and stock is stock is mostly bones. You can look it up.
When bone broths came out, I was like, “you mean a stock?” I’ve never bothered to buy one of those cartons. Do they actually gel up if you put them in the fridge? I suspect they won’t, which means they don’t really have all that much rendered gelatin in them. So far as I could figure out, it seems perhaps a “bone broth” is supposed to be cooked an even longer period of time than a stock, but I don’t know.
I get a chicken from Costco. I take the meat off and toss ALL the bones into a pot, cut up an onion and a couple of carrots and celery stalks, cover with water, boil for 3 hours.
I happened to have a box of Swanson Bone Broth Chicken (their name) in my fridge that was just past the expiration date.
So, I dumped it out in the sink (for science). It was 100% liquid. No gelatin whatsoever (or rather, nothing was gelatinous in what came out of the box). It had been in my refrigerator for a few weeks so as chilled as it was going to ever get.
Of course, other brands may be different so don’t sue me.
(FYI: The link above is to a case of the stuff…I did not have a case…just that is what I had in the fridge)
OK, so I’ll go on a mild rant, then. I really don’t know what the fuck the difference is between a Swanson chicken broth vs a chicken stock vs (I would guess) a bone broth. They first two taste the goddamned same to me, and have the same thin mouthfeel (I know, I know … some folks hate that term) as one another. To me, if the liquid doesn’t gel in the fridge and calls itself a stock, it either hasn’t been reduced enough and/or hasn’t enough bone matter in it. I mean, you could fake this by adding gelatin if you want. My guess is that companies think that consumers will say “ick” if they have their broth/stock turn into jelly in the fridge, and they may be right. But, for me, if it don’t gel, it ain’t stock. Even meaty broths I make will gel, as I tend to use a decent amount of bones in them. And that’s good. That’s what gives you that velvety texture (hey…I didn’t use “mouthfeel” there), and richness.
Like look at the few seconds of this video and this dude’s beef stock:
That’s what I wanna see. Same with chicken stock, though maybe not quite as extreme, it’s close. When I pull my stock out of the fridge, it’ll come out in one piece if flipped onto a plate.
For a few months my gf was buying cartons of bone broth to eat for a “healthy” lunch. When I noticed she stopped, I asked her why. Turns out it tasted awful.
