With this week's warm weather blast, it looks like winter is winding down. When that happens, the days of binge watching Game of Thrones also come to an end. But while you are watching TV during those remaining brutally cold days, you could be stocking up your pantry in preparation for summer. Cooking in a hot kitchen during the humid summer months is not the most appealing. That is why you should be building up certain time-consuming pantry items now while you have time to spare. No one wants to cook for hours in the summertime when you could be enjoying the outdoors.
Stock is just one ingredient you can make right now to enjoy later in the year.
Stock requires attention at certain points, but is actually pretty easy to make. Having good quality stock on hand is a venerable Culinary Swiss Army knife. The principle ingredient to any good stock are bones. The various kinds of stock are made with different types of bones, with the exception of vegetable stock. The recipe for stock is extremely simple if you use this easyl-to-remember ratio of 5:1. That's five parts bones to one part mirepoix. For example, if I were to use 10 pounds of bones (chicken, beef, or veal bones), I would need two pounds of mirepoix.
Chicken Stock
10 pounds Chicken Bones
1 pound Yellow Onion, rough chopped
1/2 pound Celery, rough chopped
1/2 pound Carrot, rough chopped
3 cloves of garlic
4 Parsley stems
2 Bay Leafs
10 Black Peppercorns
Fill your stockpot with your bones. Cover them with cold water, about an inch or two above the bones. We want to start the stock slowly by turning your burner to low. Don't worry about the time it takes to warm up, remember, this will be cooking for six hours.
While that is going, we can get our mirepoix chopped up (just like you learned at The Chopping Block's Knife Skills class, right?) and place it into a cheesecloth and tie it up with some butchers twine.
After an hour, scum will start floating to the top. This is a critical part to making a good stock. We need to skim the top of the stock carefully. The purpose is to remove the physical by-products of the bones. This will ensure a flavorful stock every time.
After an hour, we can take the cheesecloth tied bag of mirepoix and put it in the pot. We will let this sit in the pot for about 4 hours.
We also need to add one more thing to the pot, something called a bouquet garni. This is simply four to five parsley stems, a bay leaf, and black peppercorns tied up. For simplicity sake we can just wrap it in cheese cloth, tie it up, and throw it in. I know there's a lot of cheesecloth flying around here, but I will help us remove the physical items we placed in the pot.
After you have had your pot going at a slow simmer, never boiled, remove the mirepoix and bouquet garni. Let the pot simmer another hour.
The next step is an important step. After the six hour mark, it's important ladle out the stock. This should be done because we don't want to disturb the bones. Disturbing the bones have the potential of clouding up your stock.
The ideal outcome is a semi clear stock that is rich in flavor with great depth. It wouldn't hurt to strain the stock through the cheesecloth either.
It's important to cool down your stock at this point. We want to get it to 39° as quickly as possible. The best way is to chill it down using an ice bath and then refrigerating. I actually freeze mine in small portions. That way I can defrost what I need quickly.
With some time on your hands, you can make this versatile stock to have ready for later use. One of my chefs in culinary school once said: "You can't make a bad sauce from a good stock." These words are so true.
For another method on making chicken stock, check out our Owner/Chef Shelley Young's video:
Shelley also has a video on making beef stock. For more how to cook videos, see our online video library.
