Making chicken and vegetable stock

Last week, LaLaGirl cracked me up with her story–including pictures–of a moldy carton of Swanson’s Chicken Broth, commenting that she really ought to make her own. I promised I would share my method, so here it is.

I say method instead of recipe, because, like so many of the things I cook up, you can use quite a range of ingredients to make stock depending as much on what you have on hand as on what your intended use. While Wikipedia goes into great depth on the different types of stock, as does my favorite, The Joy of Cooking, but I will focus in on the two I make most often: chicken and vegetable.

My foray into making my own stock came from a desire to have a use for chicken giblets and bones, and from a frustration at the overwhelming amount of salt–or, conversely, complete lack of flavor–in store-bought stock. The basic ingredients for stock include:

• bones – Although many recipes call for beef or fish stock, I do not eat either of these things. So I typically use a chicken carcass, including the bones, neck, and giblets.
• vegetables – The French call their combination of celery, carrots, and onion Mirepoix. They have a fun name for everything culinary, n’est-ce pas? As usual, I’m not dogmatic about the combination of vegetables here and enjoy swapping things for celery, which I detest. Fennel is fun, but I often just use carrots and onions. Mushrooms add a rich, earthly flavor and color to the stock. Tomatoes, turnips, leeks, parsnips, and peppers are also an option. Traditional Thai white stock uses daikon radish, scallions, garlic, and Chinese Melon in place of the celery, onion, carrot combo. You can really throw lots of different veggies in. I would avoid potatoes (they make a starchy stock) and beets (because the flavor overwhelms all the other veggies.
• herbs – Once again, the French have their version, which involves bouquet garni (parsley, thyme, bay, and sometimes sage or celery leaves). But the herbs you can use are just about limitless. Making something with an Asian flare? Try cilantro, thai basil, ginger, and lemongrass. Use strong herbs like sage and rosemary sparingly so that they don’t mask the flavors of other herbs. I almost always throw in loads of garlic and a handful of black peppercorns.

So you’ve got your ingredients assembled. Now you have options. You can roast the veggies and the bones in a 400 degree oven for about an hour first to enhance the flavor, deglazing the pan with a little hot water or wine to get all the nice brown bits into your stock pot. Or if you want a more subtle stock (for delicate vegetable soups or dishes, for example, asparagus risotto), skip this step and just dump all of your ingredients into a stock pot, cover with 2-3 quarts of water, bring to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer for an hour or so. Let cool slightly, strain, taste and add salt, and either put in the refrigerator if you intend to use it within the week, or freeze it and use it later.

A note about the salt. I already pointed out that I’m opposed to salty stock. So I sometimes omit salt all together and add it when I’m actually making whatever it is I’m making with the stock. I’m pretty sure traditional cooks would frown upon this, but hey…

Here are a couple of ingredient combinations to get you started, but once you’ve gotten familiar with the technique, you really can make stock with whatever is on hand and using different quantities of these ingredients:

• Mushroom stock – a half pound of mushrooms, an onion, two carrots, 8 cloves of garlic, bouquet garni herbs, a handful of black peppercorns, and red pepper flakes (to taste).
• Chicken stock – the carcass of one chicken, including neck and giblets, an onion, 2 carrots (or a carrot and a celery stalk), bouquet garni, and a handful of black peppercorns.
• Vegetable stock – An onion, a leek, a carrot, a turnip/parsnip/another carrot, 8 cloves of garlic, bouquet garni, and a handful of black peppercorns.
• Thai stock – A knob of fresh ginger, sliced, a bunch of basil and cilantro (can just use the stems here), 2 garlic cloves, 2 scallions or a white onion, a daikon radish, and a chinese melon (or chayote squash).