Recipe Making Your Own Stock

Do you have some favourite recipes or tricks for making your own stock/broth? Is it worth the effort to you? Do you think it's better than store-bought?

I roasted an organic chicken for dinner tonight, seasoned with pink salt, black pepper, smoked paprika, cumin, and fennel seeds. Now I have the drippings, the seasoned carcass, and the neck in the crock pot with a couple of chunked-up carrots, a few ribs of celery (stalks and greens alike), and a few radishes. I think the radishes make it special. They give it an awesome ruby color, and a different depth of flavour. Covered the whole mess with 4 or 5 quarts of water, and I'm letting it sit and simmer until sometime tomorrow.

 

Making my own stock is one of those Living The Dream things for me (along with having all-matching clothes hangers, and knitting actual wearable items that aren't just a long rectangle).

I don't have experience of making my own stock but I am interested. I don't really do meat any more so doing a stock with a carcass or joint isn't an option for me. There are of course options for vegetable stock but I can't get past the idea that I'm putting a bunch of beautiful vegetables into some water and then afterwards, having been stripped of much of their nutritional value, I take them out and just have this liquid, even if that liquid is going to do great things to my otherwise very average cooking. I love the idea of the stock, hate the idea of the rest of the waste. Perhaps I could just freeze the leftover veg and use small amounts of it to bulk out other dishes. Or perhaps I just need to get over it.

Let us know how your stock comes out.

 

Outstanding! All this time, I've been throwing away all my vegetable trimmings, like a chump.

 

@ snowy. Great idea!

 

The last two times I tried to make stock from a carcass, I ended up with a gummy mess. Too much collagen from the bones, I think. One I was able to save by skimming it after it chilled a bit, but the turkey stock from the christmas turkey turned into Turkey Jello in the fridge.
I'm going to save my veggie trimmings now. You'll have to explain it to the husband... he'll want to know why on earth there is a baggie of "vegetable crap" in the freezer, I suspect.

 

My chef always told me, "Never put anything into a stock that you wouldn't eat." Don't throw trash/bad parts of the veggies in there or you are going to get foul tasting stock.

Veggie "stock" essence is easy, throw veggies in water and boil for hours.

You only throw raw bones in stock, bones that you use after they have been cooked won't give you as flavorful a stock. With beef/veal bones, lay them out on a tray and brush tomato paste over the bones and bake for 10 minutes at medium heat. Then boil them with JUST celery, onions, and carrots. No garlic, no other scrap veggies, no wine, no herbs (fresh or dryed), just bones and the french trifecta. You boil them once for 24, strain and chill. If you have good enough bones, you can get a second "run" out of them that will be good to reduce to use for soups. Less flavorful, but still good. Best thing to do for noodle's problem is chill it then scrap the top layer off the pot.

Talk to your local butcher and see if he/she will sell you bones by the pound. Best way to get raw bones for cooking.

After you make stock, take some a reduce it by half. You now have home-made demi-glaze. You can make wonderful tasting sauces from that. If you are interested in that, let me know and I'll throw you some tricks about demi-glaze.

 

1whole chicken
1 large onion
4 carrots
4 celery
fresh thyme
fresh parsely
2 whole cloves garlic
water

Heat to a slow boil. reduce heat to simmer. use skimmer to remove scum. yumm

 

I've seen people keep bad spots in potatoes, bruised parts of carrots, rotten onions, those kinds of things. That's what I mean by trash. Veggie essence is find for tough to eat veggies.

 

I never touch store bought stock if I have a choice. But having said that I do use the powered chicken base they sell at winco. That gives you full control over how much onion you add, salt, pepper, etc. And of course just how strong you want the stock to be in the end. The awful stock in canned soup - especially the cheaper ones- is my biggest problem with them. I cooked for 40-50 residents for over two years and got pretty good at making the stock quite tasty for vegetable soup, minestrone, and chicken soup.