There are any number of axioms in the culinary world. Brown meat on all sides to develop the best flavor. Let cooked meat rest for a few minutes before slicing to allow juices to redistribute. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. But perhaps the most fundamental axiom is that cooking with homemade stock is infinitely better than using canned broth or bouillon. I'm a busy guy-- I've got 100 hours of Tivo'd television to watch, after all-- so I've always made do with Better Than Bouillon brand concentrated chicken base. The same brand's beef base won Cook's Illustrated's commerical broth taste test, beating out canned broths, and come on-- it says it's better than bouillon right there on the label. And the results I've gotten have been completely satisfactory, and mighty convenient. Still, magazine after cookbook after television show kept touting the virtues of homemade stock. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping.
Then I stumbled onto EGullet-- and incidentally, you're all on my shit list for not bringing this site to my attention sooner-- and more specifically, their EGullet Culinary Institute. Which is really a fancy schmancy name of a series of online cooking lessons, all of which are archived for posterity. Which reminds me, henceforth Static Zombie shall be known as the Static Zombie Procrastination Institute. I'll post lesson one tomorrow.
The very first lesson on EGullet? Cooking your own stock. I read through it and was inspired by the apparent simplicity of it all. Photographs documented the process, and a Q&A session offered testimonials from many first-time stock-makers. My interest was piqued, but I always buy packages of chicken breasts instead of whole chickens, so I never have necks and backs and other meaty bones to use for making stock. What got me off the fence was the lesson's suggestion to just buy a couple of chickens, and when they're fully cooked about 40 minutes into the process you can fish out the birds, strip the perfectly poached breast meat right off the bones for consumption, and then return the carcass to the pot.
Sold.
Fast forward a couple of days, and I've got stock. About 1.5 quarts of the gelatinous stuff, frozen in 1 oz cubes and 1/3 cup muffins. And I've got a great curried chicken salad from the breast meat, and chicken quesadillas from the mostly-spent-but-still-good-for-quesadillas meat from the rest of the carcass. And it really wasn't that much work.
Is it better than Better Than Bouillon? I dunno-- I haven't made anything with it yet. But it feels like I've unlocked a secret cooking level. Now I just need to discover the finishing move.
Posted by Peter at December 21, 2004 2:00 AMWhat do we want?
Procrastination!
When do we want it?
Next week would be fine, or maybe the week after...
We make our own chicken stock, have for a year now. It is soooo much betetr than anything elsewe have used. We froze the first batch in 1/2 Cup amounts, and that was clearly too large. 1/3 Cup is much better.
We got the idea from Bittman's How to Cook Everything.
Posted by: Danny on December 21, 2004 7:22 AMmy personally discovery... the best stock comes from chicken feet. Admittedly, no useful chicken results, but the stock is yummy!!
Oh, and save the skimmed fat for chopped liver... Aunt Rebecca would be proud of me!
Posted by: Danielle on December 21, 2004 10:37 AMChopped liver? Ugh! No, no, and mmmmmmm... no.
It only occurred to me AFTER I'd thrown it all away that I should have saved the schmaltz. If for no other reason than the giggles I'd have gotten for using it.
Next time. As for chicken feet... I've gotta say I'm sold on the whole chicken approach, because that poached breast meat is such a wonderful byproduct. Had another curried chicken salad sandwich a few minutes ago for lunch, and it was just delish.
Posted by: Peter on December 21, 2004 1:42 PMIf you ever get tired of the chicken breast, you can probably find chicken carcasses -- bones with some meat attached -- for really cheap in large chinese supermarkets. Here in Boston the biggest chinese grocery chain sells them for 69 cents a carcass. Hopefully Seattle has similar deals. Our experience is that 2 such carcasses beat 1 whole chicken in flavor when boiled in same amount of water.
We cantonese eat a lot of soup, and a lot of chinese soup base is either chicken or pork. Acccordingly, the same chinese supermarkets also sell very cheap pork bones, esp. neck bones, with lots of meat attached. Basically, while chicken bones and pork bones may be specialty items for americans, they are day-to-day regular items for cantonese (and probably all chinese) cuisine, and so they are more easily and cheaply available at chinese supermarkets than american ones.
Posted by: antkam on December 21, 2004 7:20 PMMost grocery stores have packs of chicken backs and necks for less than a dollar a pound, which makes great stock if you don't need poached meat.
I had always thought that the extremely long simmering time would overcook the meat, but Peter, you have not found that to be so?
Posted by: Don on December 23, 2004 11:27 AMYou only simmer the whole chickens for 30-40 minutes. Then you fish them out of the pot, let them cool for a few minutes, and remove the breast meat, replacing the carcasses in the pot and continuing the simmering process. Done this way, the meat is not overcooked at all.
Posted by: Peter on December 23, 2004 2:02 PM