Chicken Stock

Chicken stock is the secret ingredient of restaurant food. A good chicken stock should have decent body, along with a mild savory flavor that enhances, rather than competes with, the sauces, glazes, and soup bases you make with it. Instead of being thin like water, gelatinous stock has more body—a quality necessary for a great sauce.

The goal is versatility, so we want to make sure it will work with all kinds of recipes. An infusion of ginger or aroma of tarragon may be lovely in certain applications, but they're also very specific flavors that we may not want in a basic stock. We don't necessarily want the flavor of stock to dominate a dish made with it; we just want that dish to be enriched by the stock. A basic white chicken stock is a pretty simple affair: It's made with water; chicken; aromatic vegetables, like onion, carrot, and garlic; and herbs.

You want at least two pounds of chicken per two quarts of water. If you don't cook a stock long enough, you risk not extracting sufficient flavor or gelatin. Throughout his testing, Daniel Gritzer from Serious Eats tasted his stocks as they cooked, and generally found about one and a half hours to be a reasonable amount of time. He also said that different parts of the chicken will contribute different amounts of gelatin to the stock: Breast meat produces a deliciously flavorful stock that is very thin, while wings produce a slightly less clean flavor, with lots of gelatin. If you do end up with a thin-yet-flavorful stock, adding a little unflavored gelatin can help boost the body. One packet of unflavored gelatin, softened in a quarter cup of cold water and then mixed into one quart of stock, did a good job of enhancing body without pushing the stock into jellied territory.

For a white chicken stock, place the bones/meat directly into the cold water for the stock; for a brown stock, brown the bones in a 350°F oven until dark golden brown, almost an hour. This makes an incredibly rich, flavorful stock with tons of body. This recipe works well for turkey or duck stocks also.

6 quarts cold water
8 pounds chicken parts (backs, necks, etc.) and bones, (or a whole chicken, cut up, if making something like Chicken and Biscuit)
2 cups coarsely chopped onions
1 cup coarsely chopped carrots
1 cup coarsely chopped celery
2 small heads garlic, cut in half horizontally
Sachet consisting of: 2 bay leaves, 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme, 1/4 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns, 4 parsley stems, wrapped in cheesecloth and tied with string

Chop the chicken into 3-4 inch pieces, making sure to cut through and expose the bones. Place all the ingredients into a large (3 to 4 gallon) stockpot and set over a medium-high heat. Bring the contents of the pot to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Do not allow the stock to boil, or the fat and scum will mix with the stock and cause it to become cloudy. It is also best not to stir the stock. The end result will be much clearer if it is not agitated while simmering.

Periodically skim off any scum that forms, and if you wish use a skimmer to skim off the fat. Let this simmer for at least three, and preferably four hours. It is this long simmering process that extracts the maximum flavor from the chicken meat and bones, as well as the natural gelatin from the bones. When refrigerated, a good chicken stock will be clear and gelatinous.

When the stock is complete, strain through a fine mesh sieve lined with cheesecloth and refrigerate or freeze what is not used. Once cool enough to handle, pick the meat off of the chicken bones and use it for a chicken salad, or a soup, gumbo or ragout.

Makes about 4 quarts of stock.