I think that homemade stock is far better than the stuff you buy, but I don’t really have the freezer space to store it. We get most of our meat from Costco and that tends to fill up the freezer pretty quickly, along with whatever bread I’ve been baking.
This week though, I made a plan to use up all the stock I made so it never had to go in the freezer.
On Sunday I made my first ever whole roast chicken, and on Tuesday, after taking the rest of the meat off the carcass, I made my stock.
In my stockpot, I put the chicken carcass, half a large onion, a few celery stalks and some languishing baby carrots. I roughly chopped the vegetables, just so they’d fit and spread out better in the pot. I also included the garlic that had been cooked inside the chicken. I know you can add bay leaves and peppercorns and I guess anything else you want, but for my first attempt I wanted to keep it pretty plain.
I added enough water to cover everything then brought it to a boil. After that I partially covered it and lowered it to a gentle simmer. Then I just kind of left it, checking every now and then how it was doing. I’ve read about skimming the top but I never seemed to have anything to skim.
There were many opinions online as to how long the stock should simmer. I went for about 6 hours. I ended up with a stock that’s darker than the stuff I buy, and while there was a very thin layer of fat, that doesn’t bother me. The stock tasted good and was jelly-like after being refrigerated (meaning I got some of the gelatin out of the bones) so I was pleased.
The stock was used to make a few batches of miso soup, which I will write about soon.
My Food Journey 