Cooking 101: Chicken Stock

November 6, 2008

This post is part of a series called Cooking 101, which introduces the basics of cooking. The series follows the book Culinary Fundamentals, with supplements from The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America. Check out the previous posts here.

Unit 14: Stocks

Part 1: Chicken Stock

Stocks are important bases for countless dishes and sauces. They add flavor and body without substantial fat. I had always bought my chicken stock in a can, but I don’t expect I’ll be doing that again any time soon (and not just because I now have a gallon of it sitting in my freezer). Making my own stock was a surprisingly awesome cooking experience, and though it may seem daunting, I would highly recommend it to anyone learning to cook. The best part was tasting how the stock changed throughout the cooking period with the addition of various ingredients. What starts off tasting pretty gross ends up surprisingly tasty.  I think this is my favorite thing that I’ve made so far.

Note: This recipe makes about a gallon of stock, but can easily be reduced based on the weight of the chicken bones and scraps you have available.

Preparation

A couple months ago I made a roast chicken and saved the bones and scraps in the freezer. I estimated these to weigh about 1 1/2 pounds. A gallon of stock, however, requires about 8 pounds of bones. Again, the amount of stock is easily scalable, but I decided that if I was going to make stock, I was going to make a lot. Nobody at Findlay Market sold chicken bones (and I didn’t want to roast another 4-5 chickens just for the stock), but I did find one vendor offering the scraps from trimming chicken breasts for $.50 a pound. I took the whole bag (5 1/4 pounds in total). Some may say I made a broth since most of it was meat instead of bones, and they are sort of right, but there isn’t really much of a difference between stocks and broths.  I actually want to cover this in a post sometime soon.

The remaining ingredients weren’t quite as weighty – one pound of standard mirepoix, and one sachet d’épices. (That is a half pound of onion, a quarter pound of carrots, and a quarter pound of celery for the mirepoix, all chopped, for those of you that don’t feel like clicking through, and one bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, 3-4 parsley stems, and a teaspoon of cracked peppercorns for the sachet d’épices.)

Equipment-wise you’ll need a large stockpot (note that you want the pot taller than it is wide if possible – it helps reduce evaporation and increases the convection currents that bring unwanted particles to the surface), a skimmer, and a fine mesh sieve/strainer or colander plus cheesecloth. You need to strain the stock through something fine.  If you are using cheesecloth at the end, first rinse it under hot water, then cold water before lining your colander with it.

I began by rinsing the bones and scraps from my roast chicken.

I added these to the pot then rinsed my frozen cube of chicken breast scraps. Yes, I did not thaw my scraps before I was ready to start cooking. Bad idea. I ended up adding everything to my pot, including the frozen chicken, and adding water. The two recipes I looked at suggested different amounts of water to start with for 8 pounds of bones and a gallon of stock output – one said 6 quarts and the other 4. Since I didn’t quite have 8 pounds of bones, I decided to just go with four quarts of water. As a rule of thumb, you want the water to cover the bones by about two inches, which is about what my gallon of water came out to. Also, you normally start with cold water to help with flavor extraction.

I didn’t want to start the official simmering process with my still frozen chicken, so I turned the heat to medium, stirred frequently and broke up the mass of scraps as quickly as possible. It soon was completely thawed and I was ready to go.

Cooking

I turned the heat to high and brought the pot to a boil for sanitation reasons. You do NOT want to leave the stock at a boil, however, so after boiling for a minute I turned it back down to medium-lowish. Bubbles should break the surface infrequently – a nice simmer. I think the ideal temperature is around 190º F. The total cooking time for your chicken stock will be between three and four hours. You want to add your mirepoix between one and two hours before the end of the cooking, and the sachet d’epices with about half an hour to 45 minutes remaining.

Hour 1: I skimmed surface frequently to remove goop and particles, and adjusted the heat if it got over 200º F. Watching the simmer should work fine, but I liked testing the temperature with a thermometer since it was my first time doing this. I actually found that skimming was most important in the first hour or so. You need to keep doing it occasionally for the whole cooking time, but you’ll get the most stuff at the beginning. The taste after an hour of simmering? Pretty gross, very chicken tasting, with a slightly slimy texture.

Hour 2: I pretty much just kept skimming. The taste at the end of the second hour? Less chicken tasting, still kind of slimy, but not quite as gross.

Hour 3: I added my mirepoix at the beginning of the third hour, planning for a four hour simmering time, as The Professional Chef recommends between one and two hours for mirepoix. I still skimmed occasionally, but there were noticeable less surface particles. Taste at the end of the third hour? Kind of good, much less chicken-like, and not quite as slimy.

Hour 4: Skimming was even less frequent for my fourth hour. About half way through (meaning 30 minutes remaining for the stock), I added a loose sachet d’epices. Taste at the end of the fourth hour? Good! I actually liked it. It didn’t taste strongly of chicken – it had a balanced flavor and was substantially better than the stock with just the mirepoix. I was surprised how well the sachet rounded out the flavor of the stock.

Straining and Cooling

Because I didn’t have any cheesecloth, I had to use this small, fine mesh thing to strain my stock. Ladle by ladle, I emptied the stock pot through the strainer into two metal mixing bowls and a medium saucepan.

Make sure you move the stock into metal bowls, as it is a much better conductor of heat and will allow the stock to cool much more quickly than in plastic tupperware. Also, if you have a large batch of stock – do NOT just place the whole thing in the refrigerator for it to cool. It will hold its heat quite well which will allow bad stuff to grow. Check out my post on cooling foods for timelines on temperatures.

Ideally you’d create an ice bath and place your bowl(s) in it, stirring the stock to cool it quickly. I didn’t think ahead, so my three ice cube trays were not quite enough. I did use a cold water bath, however, and managed to cool the stock to a sufficient temperature before placing it in the refrigerator.

My plan was to freeze it in quarter cup amounts in muffin tins, but it is important to let the stock cool completely first, as you can easily remove excess fat that congeals on the top. Tasty looking, I know.

After that I just froze it in muffin tins, removed the pieces, and stuffed them into three ziploc bags.

Success?

I evaluated my stock according to the four standard standards: flavor, clarity, body, and aroma.

Flavor and Aroma: I was impressed with the flavor of my stock. Of course I don’t have anything to compare it to, but it seemed well balanced and tasty.  The aroma was fine, I guess, but I didn’t notice anything special.

Clarity: The clarity of my stock was decent for the first 5/6. It seemed pretty clear. The last 6th, however, from the bottom of the pot, was pretty cloudy, so I may need cheesecloth or a better sieve when I do this again.

Body: I’m honestly not sure what exactly it should feel like, but I think it was fine. It certainly had more body than water, had lost most of the sliminess tasted at the beginning, and was pretty gelatinous once chilled. The guy from whom I bought the chicken scraps said I wouldn’t have as much gelatin in my stock (which helps with body), since they weren’t bones, but from what I could tell, it didn’t hurt the body too much.

Color: The color seemed pretty good – it was a nice golden yellow.

Overall? I thought my stock was a big success. It was fun making it and really cool to taste the flavor change over time with the addition of the various ingredients. What would I do differently? Have more ice on hand for cooling it. Maybe make a smaller batch. Not skim it quite as often (I was a bit overzealous). Oh, and make sure everything was thawed before I started.

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