Since I just did a post about cooking whole
chickens I thought it would be the perfect time to chat about some
chicken stock. It’s nutritious, delicious and super easy to make, store
and use. Chicken stock can replace water in almost any recipe to
increase flavor and calorie intake for your little ones.
The traditional way to make chicken stock is
to boil off a chicken carcass in a large stock pot filled with water and
other aromatics which is great when you have the time on a weekend to
devote 4-8 hours to letting something boil on your stove, but lets face
it, we are busy people. My new and improved way rocks the house and can
be done overnight while you are sleeping or during the day when you are
out and about. Lets call it Crock-Pot Stock
What you need:
Chicken bones
Water
aeromatics: onion, garlic, lemon
Vegetables: the holy trinity of cooking: onion, carrot, celery
Spices: S&P, herbs of choice
Since I had two chickens I added the birds
(still fully stuffed) to my crock-pot, added several cut carrots, a
couple stalks of chopped celery, a tsp of herbes de Provence,
salt and fresh ground pepper. I filled the crock-pot with water leaving
an inch or two of space at the top of the pot for space to boil and
turned the pot on low and let the stock cook overnight. The next morning
I strained out the chicken and vegetables from the stock and used half
for a chicken and orzo soup (Ill post more about this later) and then
poured the rest into ice cube trays to freeze for later use.
If you are going to take the time to make a
whole chicken there is not that much more work needed to make your own
stock. Homemade stock is much more flavorful than store bought versions,
you have the comfort of knowing exactly what is in it and it can be
frozen into small portions to limit your waste. I definitely recommend
trying it out since it is also helps me feel like I am stretching my
money a bit further when I really use every bit of my bird.
