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Chicken Stock

I make roasted chicken soup regularly, and have developed a method that is low in cost, produces many days' worth of meals, and reduces food waste. One day of effort accompanied by a little maintenance as you make other meals is all it takes. The stock produced can be used to make soups, of course, but can also flavor couscous or rice, and be used anywhere you would use water in a savory dish to add some hearty chicken flavor.

Basic Concepts

Stock is created by simmering the bones, meat, connective tissues, and skin (in the case of chicken) with various vegetables, herbs, and spices over a long period of time. This lengthy cooking process develops a melding of all flavors present over time, and because the medium is water, it can be as dilute or concentrated as you want simply by boiling off or adding more water.

While my method already decides this for us because of the kind of chicken used, you should know that traditionally, stocks come in two categories: white and brown. The language differs between countries and culinary traditions, but the idea remains the same: "brown" stocks use roasted components, while "white" stocks use normal, unroasted components. Adding that roasted flavor is often more desireable than not, but if you are trying to make a light, refreshing, spring time soup, the relatively low and dark roasting notes will interfere with that flavor profile. The method I describe here is for making a brown stock, as the chicken (and optionally the vegetables) is roasted.

Similarly, a stock may be thick or thin, which is determined by how high the temperature is while simmaring/boiling, and how diluted the final product is. The thicker the stock, the more hearty it is, while thinner stocks are more light and refreshing. Each has applications, and you should try both to see what you like the best in the soups you enjoy making. Thicken your stock by increasing the temperature or by allowing more water to be boiled off before extracting the final product.

Wisdom states that the larger the animal used in the stock, the longer the process should take to extract the full amount of flavor from the bones. As such, a stock of cow bones can easily simmer for a few days, while the very much smaller chicken should only take eight hours at most. A fish stock, using bones far smaller than a chicken's, can take maybe two to four hours to create.

In general, most flavors included in a stock will average together over time into a singular flavor profile. You as the potager, or soup maker, decide what that flavor profile consists of by adding vegetables, herbs, and spices, and tasting the stock regularly to track its progress toward that goal. Flavor profiles take the shape of a pyramid, with "low notes" at the bottom, balancing out a relative few "high notes" at the top. The more mild a flavor is, the more "low" its flavor note is, with spiciness, acid, and sweet flavors being considered "high." This is an important factor to keep in mind, because it will dictate how you build the components of your stock. A little bit of spiciness as a high note can easily overwhelm your base flavors if not balanced correctly, but it's those high notes that define the mood or character of the stock. After all, what sounds better between chicken soup and rosemary lemon chicken soup or spicy southwest chicken soup?

As a good rule of thumb, your pot should have at least as much (if not more) vegetables as it has chicken, your herbs should be a fraction of your vegetables, and you should limit your spices to one or two, generally only adding as much as one individual herb. This pyramid of flavor is a foolproof way to make a soup that is not weighted too heavily in one direction or another, and will be easily to adjust later on in the process to emphasize certain notes over others.

Stock by itself is a liquid that contains a lot of protein and collagen, and is a perfectly good drink or addition to a meal on a cold day, especially if it's been made more concentrated. Where a stock really shines is in making a soup, which is when you add ingredients like vegetables, meat, and noodles to the stock. Typically, you will want to add soup ingredients that complement the stock's flavor profile, or more basic ingredients that will be heightened by the stock's flavor notes. For example, a strongly spicy stock could easily be paired with potatoes, corn, and beans to produce a spicy soup that is well balanced and easy to eat. On the other side of that coin, you may have a soup in mind whose components carry their own flavor profile, in which case, a more subdued stock would be called for.

Equipment and Common Ingredients

To make stock, you will need:

Optional equipment includes:

While you should experiment with your own flavor profiles, and use what you have available, below is a list of common ingredients that all work together, and form the basis of most stocks:

Step 0: Saving Vegetable Scraps

As you make other meals, save your vegetable and herb scraps in a bag in your freezer. Carrot tops, celery leaves, that little pile of diced onion you had left over after burrito night - all of these are little flavor opportunities that you would otherwise be throwing away.

In general, you should avoid anything that is bitter, as this bitterness is a high note that can drown out your intended flavors. Bitter items include carrot leaves/stems, most stems in general, spinach, some offal from the chicken, and cucumber peels. Similarly, some vegetables, like potato, lettuce, and cabbage, will contribute little flavor and should only be added in small quantities.

Treat your freezer bag as you would your stock - build a pyramid of flavor in there that is balanced and intentional. It can be fun to just throw all your scraps in there and see how it affects your stock, but all it takes is one too many foul flavors to throw off what would otherwise have been a great flavor profile.

Take the contents of your freezer bag into account when planning what to put in your stock pot, as it may mean that you can buy slightly less ingredients.

Step 1: Preparing the Chicken

For the purposes of this guide, I recommend going to your local grocery store and picking up a rotisserie chicken from their deli section. I like getting either rosemary lemon or roasted garlic at my grocery store. These typically cost anywhere from $5-15, and are already well-seasoned and roasted. This cuts down the amount of time needed to arrive at the final product, and reduces the chance of things going wrong. Instead, you can of course season and cook your own chicken. Just ensure that the chicken is cooked all the way through and that the entire bird, skin and all, is available for use.

With your chicken ready, you can begin preparation by deboning it. Remove as much meat as you want to eat. Any meat left on the bones will help flavor the stock, but you'll want to get as much as you can for other uses. Some of that chicken will go into making chicken soup, and the rest can be used for sandwiches or other meals. Most of the offal can be discarded, as it tends to have a bitter or iron-rich taste, which we don't want; however, the neck is a welcome addition, if present.

At the end of step 1, you should have a pile of bones and skin that you can immediately place in your stock pot. If you're feeling fancy, you can also drizzle olive oil on the bones themselves and give them a quick roast; for now, let's get that in the stock pot and move on.

Step 2: Preparing the Vegetables

Vegetables are the supporting cast in your stock, and are necessary to create a well-rounded flavor profile. There are vegetables that I consider mandatory in any stock, which I will buy no matter what other flavors are present. These are:

I will then, most of the time, find additional vegetables to extend the range and depth of the flavor pyramid. In the past, I have used the following in different combinations:

Roughly chop all vegetables into halves, thirds, or fourths, depending on the size, and place them in the stock pot with your chicken bones. Try to Tetris them in there so that they are well-packed and can all fit with at least an inch of space from the top of your stock pot. You will fill the pot up to this limit, so it's important that your ingredients don't extend past the water. If they do, when your pot boils, you will have a pretty big mess to clean up.

Step 3: Liquids, Herbs, Spices, and the Flavor Profile

With the bottom and middle of the flavor pyramid built with the chicken and vegetables, we can now start to build on top of that using herbs and spices. As with the vegetables, there are some herbs and spices that I consider to be mandatory. These produce the classic chicken soup flavor that you're expecting. You will want to add 1-3 tablespoons of each to your stock pot, or more depending on how much water you have and what flavors you want to emphasize. These are:

Additionally, there are many other herbs and spices that can give a different character, though they should be added lightly (with stronger flavors needing 1 tablespoon or less, or a pinch or two) so as not to not overwhelm. These are:

Finally, there are some liquids that are vital components of your stock, and should be added in a few glugs:

I once heard that a good stock has oil in it, and from experience, that has definitely been true. On the other side of that, the brightness given by the vinegar helps to highlight your high notes and can add contrast to the overly savory base we're building. The olive oil and vinegar are the end-caps at either end of your flavor profile, and add depth you didn't know you were missing. A few glugs of each is good to start - you can always add more later.

Noticeably missing is salt. We will add this later on as the flavors develop.

Add enough water to your stock pot to come up to one or two inches below the lip of the pot, at least covering all of your ingredients.

Step 4: The Simmer

With your stock pot filled, bring the mixture to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to medium so that the boil reduces to a simmer. The heat will remain on medium the rest of the cooking time.

As I said in the Basic Concepts section, a higher heat can thicken your soup by allowing some byproducts of the simmer to emulsify into the liquid instead of separating out as scum. Too high of a temperature can ruin these flavors by emulsifying the extra stuff that we ACTUALLY want to separate out. I would recommend staying at medium heat for your simmer, and save the high heat boiling method for later experimentation. High heat stocks include tonkotsu broth for ramen, and sul lung tang broth, which both have a noticeably cloudy and rich character.

As your stock simmers, scum will rise to the surface and collect. This scum should be scooped/strained out so that it doesn't taint the character of your soup, but don't feel like you have to be too militant about it. When scooping, try not to scoop out any of your herbs, which will generally float on top.

Your stock will simmer for up to eight hours. Take the time to check on it every hour, keeping a tasting spoon handy. About every two hours, you will need to add more water, refilling the stock pot back up to its original level.

Step 5: Developing Flavor

More and more flavor will leech into the water as the stock simmers, naturally becoming more flavorful as time goes on. This reaches a limit, for chicken, at around 8 hours, where the bones, vegetables, and herbs have very little left to give. While this process is happening, you should regularly taste the stock to see what direction it's heading.

Only at the halfway mark should you make any adjustments to the flavor profile, to include the addition of salt. The chicken meat and skin naturally has salt in it, as well as whatever the skin was flavored with, and it's important to let all of the flavors meld together before making adjustments. Adjusting or adding too soon will often produce too strong of a flavor later on, or dethrone some subtle flavor interaction you had hoped for.

When making adjustments, only add small amounts of your correction, stir, taste, let it simmer for a while, then taste again. Below are some adjustments that you can make:

When adding salt, only add a few pinches at a time, stir, let it simmer, then taste again, just like any other correction. Too much salt is unpleasant, but too little reduces the impact of flavors. Where cooking is concerned, salt is a way to enhance other flavors; that is to say, you salt things to make them taste better, not to make them salty.

The other option regarding salt is to not add any to your stock. This has the advantage of allowing you to season your soup each time you make it, and potentially using less salt overall.

Your aim in developing this flavor profile is to have a final product that can exist without other ingredients. Even a light, clarified stock must be able to stand on its own as a good stock, even if it's not being intended to be the star of the show.

Step 6: Separating Out the Stock

Once your stock tastes the way you want it to, it's time to extract it from the stock pot and the used up bones, vegetables, and herbs. To be clear, these things are used up, nearly flavorless and structureless, and should not be used for anything else.

Using a strainer, strain your stock into a separate stock pot or other vessel, like canning jars. Using a finer or more stringent strainer, or doing multiple straining passes, will clarify the stock, removing more and more particulate. For my purposes, I want to have all the flavor I can get, so I only do a rough strain that excludes the waste but doesn't remove very much of the cloudiness that I've worked so hard to emulsify into the liquid.

Taste this final product one last time to bask in the glory of your creation, then either store it, or immediately begin making soup. I always make as much as I can, often ending the simmer with a full stock pot of liquid. This provides me with many days of soup meals for two; however, if you let the water boil off, you can create an incredibly flavorful single meal.

I will store my stock either in a secondary stock pot, or in canning jars. The stock can live in your fridge for weeks, but I would recommend eating it sooner rather than later, as your other ingredients will go bad quickly.

Step 7: Immediate Cleanup

Trust me: throw away your waste and clean your stock pot and tools as soon as you can. I will typically have plastic bags, doubled up, ready to receive the waste, so that I can tie it up and throw it away with minimal chance of leaking or foul odors.

Step 8: Making Soup

Believe it or not, the hard part is over. You now have liquid gold that will carry any soup ingredients you want to chicken-y heaven.

When making the soup, simpler is better. Pick one to three vegetables at most, and up to five total ingredients. Your favorite soups are not a pile of chopped up food sitting in a liquid, nor is it a bowl of liquid with a handful of chunks in it - a soup is a balance of the two.

Here's a trick I know: Use the bowls you want to serve the soup in as measuring cups for how much stock to put in your saucepan. If you have under five ingredients, and those ingredients don't take a ridiculously short or long time to cook, you will pull out exactly the same amount of soup at the end as the amount of stock you put in. I don't know why it works, but it does!

Chop your vegetables and chicken into spoon-sized chunks, or smaller, to make it easier to eat. Sometimes it's nice to have nice big cuts of chicken or fancy-cut carrots, but in general this just makes it harder to eat with a spoon - particularly in my case, it's especially difficult with a mustache. If you use noodles, those can be a good guide for how big to cut the other ingredients.

Here are some classic combinations you can try out using the chicken meat you gathered earlier:

When boiling multiple soup ingredients, consider how long it takes each ingredient to cook properly. Carrots and celery take longer to soften than noodles and potatoes, and those take longer than chicken or peas. Regularly taste your vegetables and noodles to check their doneness. Ladle into bowls, top with ground pepper, and serve with buttered bread. A delicious, cheap, home-made soup.

Recipe: Addama's Chicken Noodle Soup

This recipe is an application of the theory presented above, and is the basic stock and soup I will make unless there's something more specific that I want to make. In general, I will lean into the garlic, rosemary, and lemon flavors that complement the rosemary lemon rotisserie chicken that I get.

Ingredients

Recipe for the Stock

Creates 4-6 bowls of soup

  1. Debone chicken, set meat aside for meals
  2. Roughly chop vegetables and herbs if using fresh herbs
  3. Place chicken bones, skin, vegetables, herbs, and spices into stock pot, along with 2 glugs each of vinegar and olive oil
  4. Fill stock pot with water to just below 1 inch from the lip
  5. Bring stock to boil, then reduce heat to medium for a simmer
  6. Allow stock to simmer for up to 8 hours, checking back at least every hour to stir, taste, and refill water
  7. Halfway through the simmer, add salt to taste
  8. When the stock has finished simmering, strain the stock liquid into a separate container, then dispose of the waste
  9. Refrigerate stock for up to a month, then freeze

Recipe for the Soup

Serves 2

  1. Chop vegetables and chicken into spoon-sized chunks
  2. Fill saucepan with enough stock to fill two bowls, add carrots, onion, and celery, then bring to a boil
  3. Reduce heat to bring to a simmer
  4. When carrots and celery are softened, add noodles to the saucepan
  5. Cook noodles until halfway done, then add chicken to the saucepan
  6. If the stock is unsalted, add salt to taste
  7. When noodles are cooked as desired, remove saucepan from heat
  8. Ladle into bowls, topped with fresh ground pepper, served with buttered bread