Chicken Stock

 

My husband particularly loves fresh chicken stock and any type of soup made with it. We both love soups and will eat them throughout the year. Anytime I cook with a whole chicken, I always keep the bones and take advantage of the bones to make a stock. Besides taking apart a whole chicken, there’s not much work to it. If you aren’t familiar with how to break down a chicken, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (one of my favorites!) does a really great tutorial here.

Honestly, stock isn’t an incredibly difficult science. You can throw another carrot in or subtract an onion and it’ll be just fine. This just happens to be my favorite way to make it. Use this in any soup, stew or chili and you’ll see the dramatic difference between store bought. I know, I know… I hope that wasn’t an eye roller. I remember watching Ina Garten and thinking “who the hell has the time to make that from scratch??” Then she’d say “or store bought is fine!” Ha! Now I find myself making tons of stuff from scratch because it brings me joy. You could also use it when making risotto which I did recently and was incredible.

 

Ingredients:

  • 5-6 pound whole chicken, broken down

  • 4-6 celery stalks, cut into pieces a few inches long

  • 2 onions, quartered

  • 4 carrots, chopped roughly

  • 6 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

  • 3-4 big sprigs of rosemary

  • 4-5 quarts water

  • Salt and Pepper

Directions:

  1. Break the chicken down (see instructional here) and set chicken breasts aside. Add everything (even the spine, innards, all of it) besides the breast to a large stock pot. I am using a 10 quart Le Creuset stock pot. It’s a great size!

  2. Add in the chopped carrot, celery, onion quarters, garlic cloves and rosemary. Top with water. It should take about 4 quarts but go ahead and fill the water up to wear its about 4/5 full. Bring the pot to a simmer and cook for 2 hours and season heavily with salt and pepper.

  3. After 2 hours, remove the solids with tongs. You can actually save the solids to reuse for another stock or just toss in the trash. Next you want to run the stock through a fine mesh strainer over a large bowl. This will help any small particles, skins, etc from making it into the final stock. Ta da! You have now made liquid gold. Pat yourself on the back.

If you want to continue on to make chicken noodle soup, follow my recipe here!

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