Easy Chicken Stock (or Broth)

For the past month or two, I've been embracing a great Sunday habit. Each week, I roast a 3-4 lb whole chicken as meat for the week and make chicken stock with the carcass. If you can argue about the use of chicken meat in stock vs broth, feel free to skip this article.

Since I always buy the ingredients for stock each week for other recipes & snacks, it's a pretty logical step that I might as well save $3-4 and just make my own. It takes about three to three and a half hours, from the time I put the chicken in the oven to the time the stock is done cooking. The actual active cooking time, however, is only about 20 minutes. While roasting the chicken or letting the stock simmer, you can go off and do something else like play video games.

As a result, I've always got an excellent flavor enhancer on hand. I eat a decent amount of brown rice, and always cook it with chicken stock instead of water. Lately I'll thrown in some red pepper flakes to make it spicy rice. It goes well in just about every soup, like chicken tortilla or apple-pork sweet potato. Both are effortless crock pot recipes.

Your main ingredient is, of course, chicken. You can either use the bones & skin from a whole roasted chicken, you can buy parts, or you can save leftover bones and unflavored skin in the freezer until you have a decent amount.

Personally, I use a roasted chicken carcass. This way I get all of the meat to use in recipes throughout the week, and I'm not actually spending any extra money. This makes the stock entirely free. I like to lightly salt and pepper some of the chicken skin and eat the crispy skin as a treat. My girlfriend all but demands that I make it on Sunday.

For those of you that may not be familiar with roasting a chicken, a 3-4 lb chicken will take about 1.5 hours at 375 degrees on the bottom rack. You oven times may vary, and there's other ways to roast a chicken. I'll post some quick instructions on how I do it later.

Some people buy chicken parts like necks & wings very cheaply and use those in place of -- or in addition to -- the carcass. This is perfectly acceptable as well, but the point for me was to avoid spending any extra money.

Lastly, you can save the bones & skin from other chicken you may have cooked, like chicken thighs. Make sure the skin isn't seasoned, and put them in an airtight container in the freezer until you have a nice sized collection.

For the onion, you'll want to buy one with the paper skin still attached. This gives the stock a little more flavor and some richer color. You can remove a little bit if it looks like it has dirt on it, but most should be clean enough.

For those of you that are interested, here's how to make chicken stock. Pictures to come later, after this week's cooking.

Ingredients:

• Chicken carcass or parts or leftover bones/skin
• 1 medium or large carrot, cut into half or thirds
• 2 ribs of celery, cut into half or thirds
• 1 medium or large onion with skin/paper, cut into quarters

Steps:

1. Wash and cut vegetables. No need to remove the ends or roots.
2. Put vegetables and chicken into a very large pot.
3. Pour cold water into pot until carcass and vegetables are fully covered (I use roughly 12-14 cups).
4. Turn heat to medium-high or high. Bring to a simmer, but do not boil*.
5. Simmer for 1-1.5 hours, skimming off any white foam that comes to the top.
6. When the stock has developed a nice yellow color, and the vegetables are soft and dull, turn off the heat.
7. Strain into another pot or large heat-safe container with a lid. Place in the refrigerator overnight.
8. The next day, open the container and skim off most of the fat that has collected on the top. At this point, you can either use it or you can separate it into containers (I use ziploc freezer bags with 2 cups of stock in each) and freeze it. If you let the stock sit in the refrigerator for more than 3 days, you should boil it for five minutes and let cool before freezing it.

* When the water boils, the marrow in the chicken bones will swell and clog the tiny pores in the chicken bones. A lot of the chicken flavor comes from the bones and marrow. If the pores are clogged, you won't get any of the flavor. Using cold water and slowly bringing it to a simmer will help extract more flavor. So... no boiling!

And there you have it! Homemade chicken stock. In summary, the recipe is: simmer chicken and vegetables for 1-1.5 hours. Done.

It might take some practice to feel comfortable, but once you've done it one or two times you'll realize it's almost effortless. Try using it in rice, baking vegetables, soups, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, or just about any dish that uses chicken. Experiment and have fun. Homemade chicken stock is the ultimate flavor enhancer.