I cut the chicken roughly into portions (although that's not necessary,) and put it in my stock pot. Then I added:
- Celery, stem and leaves
- 4 carrots (I didn't peel them, I just washed them very well, and scrubed them with the hard side of the sponge)
- Parsley, about a cup, coarsely chopped, including stems
- Two onions, quartered
- 6 cloves of garlic, smashed
- Two leeks
- One star-anise
- Three cloves
- Around 15 peppercorns
- Dried sage
- Dried thyme
When it started to boil, I lowered the heat to low, and left it to simmer. After a few hours, the water had reduced quite a bit, and the house smelled very nice.
Then I strained the liquid and let it cool. I'm going to skim off the fat tomorrow after it solidifies in the fridge, bottle it in plastic bottles, and put it in the freezer.
As I've written before, this is much better than stock-flavored cubes, or even the stock you can get boxed from the supermarket. And low overhead, too, you just put everything in the pot and it takes care of itself. It takes a few hours, but it doesn't even need stirring.
The solid leftovers
Unfortunately, there's not much taste left in the solids after boiling for a few hours. Plus, the chicken had almost dissolved into fibers, and there were a whole lot of tiny bones everywhere. Normally, I just throw it away. This time, I had a different idea. I went through the solids to remove the small bones, by transferring small batches with a fork into a bowl, and throwing away any bones that came up. Very tedious and time consuming, I won't make a habit of it. Fortunately, you can multiplex this part, and also talk on skype, listen to the radio, or watch a movie (or all of the above) at the same time.
After the boring "separate from the bones" phase, I also took the carrots out. The carrots were the only thing in the solids that looked like itself, everything else had melted into tiny pieces, all mixed together. Remember I hadn't peeled the carrots before, so I peeled them now. Then I puréed them with the food processor, to get a nice, bright orange purée. I'm going to use it to color and decorate things.
The rest of the stuff was about 1.5 liters of dissolved solid leftovers to experiment with. After looking for ideas online, I decided to try making patties out of them. I took about half a cup and mixed it with a quarter of a cup of breadcrumbs. Then I added salt, pepper, and half an egg, and molded it into small kefte. I fried these in a stick-proof pan in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. They came out quite tasty!
I still don't know what I'll do with the rest. I might just make everything into kefte and fry it too, but I'm itching to try something new now. I'll keep you posted.
3 comments:
Thank you Polyvie for not showing us the chopped-off head of that poor chicken! Next time tell us how to make vegetable stock. And how to store it (freezer?)
It was kinda gross, indeed. At least it was already dead :-)
I'll take some pictures when I next make vegetable stock. Basically, I save all kinds of peels (washed before peeling), stems and leftover parts of vegetables in a plastic bag in the freezer. When I'm out of vegetable stock, I use them to make more. To get more flavor, I toss some quartered onions, garlic and carrots in an oven pan with a spoon of olive oil, brown them for 20 minutes in a hot oven. Then I put everything in the stock pot, cover with cold water, and reduce. It takes less time than the meat to get the flavor out from vegetables, especially if you chop them a bit. If you want more color, wash the onions and use without peeling the outer skin. I add some spices: cloves, peppercorns, anise, maybe allspice, ginger, etc. No salt or pepper, these can be added when using the stock.
I forgot the storing part: Let it cool, skim the fat (if any) on top, bottle it in plastic bottles and put it in the freezer. I use 1-liter plastic milk bottles. When you unfreeze it, keep it in the fridge, and use it within a day or two. Stock doesn't have salt or other preservatives (vinegar, lemon), so it'll go bad in three days after you unfreeze it. One 1-liter bottle is enough for a risotto or a soup. Alternatively, some people reduce it until it's very concentrated and thick, and then freeze it in ice-cubes. Then you add a cube directly to your food when cooking, like the retail stock-cubes.
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