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Saturday, October 04, 2008

Chicken Stock Overload

I don't really know how or why this happened, but somehow I ended up with EIGHT quarts of homemade chicken stock in my deep freeze out in the garage.  I can feel a serious bout of soups coming on: white chicken chili, butternut squash apple, beef chili....

My Chicken Stock (a compilation of several recipes, based off Ina Garten's)

3 carcasses of roasting chickens, and any other chicken parts you want to throw in (breasts on the bone, necks, whatever.  You can freeze the chicken carcasses after you've eaten the meat, then just defrost them all when you're ready to make the stock.)
2 large onions, unpeeled and quartered
1 leek, top and bottom trimmed, cut in half and washed out well, quartered
4 stalks celery with leaves, cut into thirds
6 carrots, washed, unpeeled, cut in half
20 sprigs of fresh parsley
1 TB. whole black peppercorns
15 sprigs fresh thyme
1 head of garlic, unpeeled and cut in 1/2 crosswise
1 TB. kosher salt
3 quarts of your favorite store-bought chicken stock (I like Trader Joe's)
4 quarts of water

Place the chickens, onions, leeks, celery, carrots, parsley, garlic and salt into a 16 to 20 quart stockpot.  Place the peppercorns and thyme sprigs into a tea ball or cheesecloth pouch and add to the pot.  (It keeps the peppercorns from floating at the top and thereby getting skimmed off.)  Add the 3 quarts of chicken stock to the pot, then the water...enough water that it covers the ingredients, could be a little more or less then 4 quarts.  Bring to a boil, once boiling, turn heat down to a simmer.  Skim off the gray foam that comes to the top in the first 30 minutes, the more you skim the junk off, the clearer your stock will be at the end.  Simmer uncovered for 4 hours.

Strain the entire contents of the pot through a colander and discard the solids.  Chill the stock overnight.  The next day, remove the surface fat.  Use within a day or two, or pack into containers or ziplock bags and freeze for up to 3 months.  

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

it is disturbing to read a recipe where the first ingredient is "carcass"....I think I'll stick to the cartons at the supermarket. :)
-kristin

Jen said...

Ha! You are funny. I just liked the idea of using all of the bird... :)