Chicken carcass, veggies, bay leaf, peppercorns, and vinegar...ready to turn into liquid gold.
Coming soon to this blog: A whole lotta soups and stews. We're starting to get into peak harvest time for local veggies, and those are some super soup makin's!
Not only do those veggies offer peak flavor, and peak nutrition, but they are CHEAP! Consider the fact that I can get a fresh green pepper at the farmers market right now 2 for $1.00. In the store we're looking at $1.00 EACH, and in the winter time, in the store, up to $2.00 each, and the quality is not even comparable.
To go into the pot with those garden-fresh goodies we're gonna need some spectacular (and FREE!) chicken stock...so today is about getting that lovely stock made and tucked away in the freezer.
What is the difference between stock and broth you say? Stock is typically made from bones, and broth from meat. Stock tends to be thicker and richer, and it is so luscious in soups. It is a huge benefit to use those bones, not only for the gelatin, collagen and minerals you get from them, but you were just going to throw them out anyway, right? And, personally, I really dislike cooking meat in liquid. All the flavor and moisture goes into the broth, and you are left with flavorless, textureless meat, in my humble opinion. But really, stock and broth are, for all intents and purposes, interchangeable.
A whole chicken is one of the very best ways you can invest your family's food budget. Roast it for dinner one night, and the next day, you want to pick those bones clean, my friend! That's chicken salad for lunch.
At that point you're are left with the final gift from this humble bird...the carcass.
Please, pretty please, for me...never toss a perfectly good chicken or turkey carcass. If nothing else, will you just freeze it for stock-making another day? Cuz that thing represents about $9.95 to you. Look at that carcass and see a ten-dollar bill.
Every time you make stock, guess what? You just MADE money, baby!!! 'Cuz see..that carcass would have just gone in the trash can. Uh uh. Nope. We're gonna use it. You can get a good 12 cups or more of the best stock you ever had for all the fall crock pot soups you'll be enjoying in the next few months. If you had to purchase (heaven forbid!) chicken stock or broth at the store...that amount would be a good $9.95, and not even come CLOSE in terms of flavor and nutrition.
Seems like every slow cooker book has a "recipe" for chicken stock, but really, it's very basic, all you need is: chicken bones, veggies, water, and vinegar. The "recipe" for chicken stock in the books I've been reviewing both look great, but neither call for vinegar, which I always like to add to mine.
So if you want a recipe, go for it: (Healthy Slow Cooker Cookbook, by the American Heart Association, or Slow Cooker Revolution, by American's Test Kitchen.)
I usually just free-style it, and I will detail that process for you below.
The best part of making your own stock...it's so stinkin' easy, it's almost like someone else made it. You come back at the end of the day and go: "Whoa. Who made this delicious-smelling chicken stock?!? Oh yeah! It was me!"
Here we go:
Step 1: Throw that carcass into the biggest slow cooker ya got. (Mine is a 6 qt round)
Step 2: Add in leftover veggies: onion, celery, and carrots.
This is how you get those veggies...every time you buy onions, carrots, and celery and chop them up for veggies and dip, or steaming, or whatever, you take what you have leftover after a couple of days, when they are starting to be not-as-crunchy-as-you'd-like-them-to be for eating fresh, and you throw them into a ziplock freezer bag: label, and freeze. This only takes a second, and soon you'll have a nice stash, all ready to make stock.
Step 3: Add a bay leaf and a few peppercorns. (And garlic cloves, peeled, if you like) AND, don't forget a bit of vinegar, like a tablespoon or two: the vinegar helps you really get all the good minerals from that carcass into your stock, especially calcium, magnesium and potassium.
Step 4: Cover with water, but leave a little room at the top of your crock, like an inch or two.
Step 5: Lid on. Turn it on low, go about your day. Come back in 12 hrs.-ish. Give or take a few hours.
Later that night....
Step 6: Turn your crock pot off and ladle your gorgeous stock through a mesh strainer into a couple of big glass containers. The more containers you can use, and the shallower the volume of stock per container the better. It will cool faster. And we want to get it cool as soon as possible.
*Aim for only 4" of stock per container, ok? That's for food safety. Any deeper and it will not be able to cool fast enough in the center to avoid bacterial growth. That goes for not jut stock, but anything you put into your fridge. No gigantic pots of chili or soup that are 8" or 12" deep...that's a "no no"...
*UPDATED: 9/15/13--Both Still Tasty.com and Putting Food By say that you don't need to worry about hot food heating up your fridge because modern fridges will automatically sense the temperature change and kick in to keep the temp at 40 degrees. But that said, I've had steam from hot food in the fridge coat everything in the fridge with a wet layer of condensation, and that's not good either. So my personal preference (which may be different from yours...) is I let it cool to where it's not steaming hot before putting it in the fridge, and I get that accomplished quickly by using lots of shallow containers rather than one big container for refrigerating my stock, and I give it a little time before going into the fridge, like 30-45 minutes, but never more than an hour.
Get it into the fridge as soon as you can. Play it safe and set a timer while it comes down from boiling hot a little bit. Of course you don't want it billowing out steam into your fridge, but certainly don't let it cool too long before going in the fridge, you don't want it to start growing bacteria. Best to go from hot to fridge-cold as quickly as possible.
Here's a quick link from Still Tasty regarding putting hot food into the refrigerator. This is my GO-TO web resource for shelf life and other topics food-safety related. Bookmark this one, it's a site you will want to refer to again and again.
Don't freak out now. This is not rocket science. To re-cap:
- No more than 4" deep...check.
- Get it into the fridge as soon as possible....check.
It helps if you have an extra "garage" fridge, but it's not totally necessary, as long as your fridge is empty enough to accommodate all that hot stock! Maybe do this the night before you go grocery shopping.
Step 7: The next day, you skim off the fat layer that has accumulated on the surface. Don't worry too much, just a quick swipe over the surface with a clean spatula to remove what you can of the fat. If you have some fat left around the edges, no worries! It will be delicious.
Now, your stock may, or may not, "gel". If your stock has turned thick and gelatin-like overnight, REJOICE my friends!!! Good job! You've found the holy grail of stock making! That is gelatin from the bones of the carcass, and THAT, is some valuable stock. Do not worry, as soon as you heat it that stock will be just as liquid as it was last night, and will be the best soup you ever had.
If your stock did not "gel", no worries, it's still fabulous, my friends. It will still be full of gelatin and minerals from the bones, and collagen from the cartilage, and vitamins and minerals from the veggies. Bone broth is fantastically healing and nourishing.
Step 8: Get it packaged to go into the freezer. I've tried every way under the sun to do this in glass canning jars, but I ALWAYS end up with at least one that's cracked when I go to take them out of the freezer, so I've started using Ziplock freezer containers. They work great, and I always end up with a nice, neat, two-cup ice cube of stock, ready to use. Work briskly. Have your containers ready to fill before you bring your stock out of the fridge. We want to keep it cold, and not have it out at room temp any longer than necessary. Label each container with the date.
How easy was that? Getcha' some stored up in the freezer, cuz we're about to bust out on some crazy-awesome soups in the near future...stay tuned.
Just as a side note: The USDA has some great food safety documents on their website. I like to tape these types of things into the inside of my cupboard doors for easy reference. Here are some handy charts for your general use in the kitchen. Also remember this website: www.stilltasty.com. I go there all the time to check shelf life of ANY foods on the planet. That is also why it is so helpful to label your food with a date as you put in into the fridge, so you don't have to wonder.
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