Chicken Stock

[MooseHillFarm]

I just made a huge pot of chicken soup tonight. My flock are egg layers, and a couple of roos I want. So it's to the grocery store for me. I've found that the fowl labeled "for soups and stewing" are far better than any other type of commercial chicken.

The fowl makes a much richer and more colorful broth, and there's lots more dark meat, which we like. I looked up fowl to see exactly what it is, and besides a generic term for birds, found it described as an "older hen who's layed a lot of eggs."

I always make mine stovetop, but really want to try the roasting bones in the oven then add to slow cooker. I've always wondered how to get the jelly like texture. Stovetop with the fowl, I notice more of that white scum that bubbles up to the top, so I spend a bit of time skimming it off.

So we had chicken soup with carrots, potatos and celery for dinner, stuck meaty carcass and pieces of skin in the freezer for roasting/slow cooking later, have broth cooling for fridge and freezer, and tons of soup left. Frugal, delicious and light years beyond Swansons.

 

[JennsPeeps]

Alton Brown did a show on making chicken stock. I've made his recipe several times but now just use it as a source of inspiration, as I just cook with whatever I've got on hand. My stocks are never the same twice!

This past weekend I made chicken stock:

Then pressure canned it (along with a couple of types of soup):

I love having homemade stock on hand. The stock I made here - 7 quarts and 8 pints - came from a chicken I'v bought for $4. I roasted the chicken using my favorite chicken recipe. Then I pulled most of the meat off of the bones and we had that for somethign like 6-7 meals between the 2 of us. I dumped the juice from the chicken into the broth, which darkened it and made it very tasty. Threw in a couple stalks of broken up celery, some snapper carrots, an onion cut in wedges, some bay leaves and peppercorns. Simmered a few hours, then canned it.

Those jars of stock just paid for the pressure canner. Why? Good quality chicken stock is around $4 carton here. With 11 quarts of essentially free stock - after all, didn't we get 6-7 meals from a $4 bird? - instead of $44 dollars of stock, my $50 second-hand pressure canner just paid for itself.

My stocks don't tend to be jello-y like MP's. It's probably because my chook didn't have as much connective tissue and I didn't cook it down that long (time crunch).

I'd love to try some beef stock someday, as homemade chili with a good beef stock would be delicious.

Or minestrone soup.

Or pho.

 

[FrenchHen]

Forget Pitt, stand aside Clooney and Jackman...

Alton Brown is a REAL man.

crush? What crush?...no crush..a dignified appreciation of a perfect guy.

 

[msgenie516]

Quote:
Hi,

OMG, how I love chicken feet! I think when you grow up with something like that, you never forget. We used to go to a local farm and buy a whole fresh-killed chicken and you got everything, including the feet! Of course, there are only two feet per chicken and when mom made the chicken soup, we (mom and I, I have no sisters or brothers) fought over them! In those days, we never, ever threw anything out--every bit got used, especially since my mom is from Germany. Those old-world people are frugal!

I don't raise meat birds (don't think I could do it and, when it comes right down to it, DH is useless in regard to something like that) so I haven't had chicken feet in years.

But not all is lost! I recently discovered a Hispanic supermarket in a nearby Mexican/Portugese community and they have packages and packages of chicken feet in their meat case right along with all the other meat! I don't remember the price, but they were not expensive. So now that I have a source, I will have to treat myself to chicken feet one day.

Thanks for bringing back the memories! Genie

 

[MissPrissy]

Places down south with old chain stores like Piggly Wiggly carry the chicken feet and stripped chitterlings. If you don't live in a place like that usually the latino markets have a lot of the various meat cuts. I have also found asain grocery stores - large ones not the conviences store size/type - carry all sort of meat cuts that aren't main stream any longer.

 

[eggzettera]

Quote:
Gosh tell me about it!

I bought Xmas dinner for my down & out neighbor & COOKED it for him telling him NO PROBLEM just give the carcass back so I can make gravy/stock out of it & recycle the bones to my chickens for calcium - did it happen?

No, room mate though it out!

BEST STOCK & GRAVY!

 

[eggzettera]

Quote:

Tell me about it!

 

[ozark hen]

Quote:
Gosh tell me about it!

I bought Xmas dinner for my down & out neighbor & COOKED it for him telling him NO PROBLEM just give the carcass back so I can make gravy/stock out of it & recycle the bones to my chickens for calcium - did it happen?

No, room mate though it out!

BEST STOCK & GRAVY!

that is awful!!

 

[Gloria]

So what do you all do with the bones after you done with them? Just throw them out?

 

[MissPrissy]

If you cook it long enough the bones are very soft. You can mash them or run them through the food processor. Yet another way to feed back iron and calcium.