Making your own chicken stock (or broth? Is there a difference?) is easy, it saves you money, it takes better than what you can buy, and should be part of any home cook’s bag of tricks.
It doesn’t require a lot of fancy knifework, or specialized gadgets. What making your own stock does require, though, is time. Not so much hands-on time, but simmering time. Today, a grey and rainy New York City Sunday, was just perfect, so that’s exactly what I did. Here’s how.
First, fill a stock pot full of cold water. Add some chicken. You can use a whole chicken, but I bought two large packages today, one of thighs, and one of legs. Both together cost about eleven dollars, and I used half of each, and put the rest away in the fridge for another dinner later in the week.
Next, add a carrot, a stalk of celery, and an onion, all three simply chopped in half. I also added some whole peppercorns, and a bay leaf. You can also add some herbs, tied up together with string; today I didn’t have any, so I just added some dried thyme.
Bring it just to a boil, turn the heat down to simmer, and let it cook for 4-5 hours.
At some point along the way, you’ll get a large amount of foam and nasty looking bits float up the top of the pot — just skim this all off, and let the stock continue to simmer. You may have to do it a second time. As it cooks, it will look like this:
After about two hours (and that’s probably even too long…), you can remove the chicken, and — with a fork and knive, as it will be *really* hot — you can remove all the meat. Let it cool, and pack it away. Return the bones to the simmering stock.
Once the liquid is reduced by about half, you’re done. Let the stock cool. To speed up the cooling, you can set the pot in a sink filled with cold water and/or ice.
Using a fine mesh strainer, pour the stock into a large bowl. (We don’t have one large enough, so I split it between two.) At this point, you should have a nicely colored, clear, fragrant broth:
I made enough today for three tupperwares full — the large one, I’ll use for a soup later this week; the smaller two, I packed away in the freezer.
Simple to do, and well worth your time. The whole thing probably cost about 5 or 6 bucks to make.
One additional note: It’s important *not* to use salt in your stock. Not only does the stock reduce, which will intensify the salt flavor, but you actually want the stock “salt neutral,” so that depending on what you’re using it for later on, you have flexibility. If you use it for soup, you’ll salt it differently than if you were to make a risotto, or a pan sauce.
Have you made stock? Anything I missed? Any tips you can share?
Happy 2009! It’s a very common tradition in Low Country southern cooking to enjoy a full bowl of Hoppin’ John on New Years eve to bring in luck for the New Year. According to my mother, who was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, the most likely the origins of this dish were from the African slaves. The first time it was written down in a recipe book is believed to be in 1847 By Miss. Sarah Rutledge, the relative of two of the signers of the Declaration of independence, in a cookbook titled 
