Homemade chicken broth

When I was about five and feeling sick and unwilling to eat, my mum fixed a cup of a kind of chicken-flavored tea from hot water and a cube of bouillon. I thought, "Wow. My mother is a genius!" I go, "What is in that cube?" It seemed to me like magic. She said, "Chicken flavor and a bunch of chemicals."  I sat there thinking, "Wow, this is brilliant. Chemicals sure do taste good." As a tot I was mightily impressed with those little bouillon cubes. 

Not now. 

A few days ago I tested the prepared cartoned broth that I use in place of my own broth in a pinch, and it does seem like those pinches are happening a lot lately because I have sorely neglected preparing my own broth even though it is so worthwhile and so fun. I poured a cup, heated it, and drank it. It is gross. It could not be fixed with additions of sea salt or grinds of fresh pepper. No herbs would help it. On its own it was pathetic, sickly, wane, and artificial,  and it stayed that way. I drank the whole thing to impress upon mind and concretize the depravity of the whole thing. All of that, and it is still better than tinned broth. 

Incidental to chicken stock is the flesh of the roasted chicken. Maybe that's not so incidental. I consider it a bonus, and a pretty good one at that.  You can skip this whole first series of steps by obtaining a couple of grocery roasted chickens and tearing them apart down to the bone. It is the carcass that you are after. I do like having the neck, the heart, gizzards, liver, those things usually in a package inside the carcass but they're not necessary. 

You will find that due to their more varied diet, free-range chickens give up a darker richer broth than regular battery chickens, but again, they are not necessary. The difference between roasters and friers is a matter of a few weeks, and those few weeks make a significant difference. The older birds are tougher at the sinew and slightly more flavorful. Roasters make a deeper stock. Turkey carcasses make excellent stock and to discard them is a shame edging on crime against the culinary art. 

This will be stock that borders on broth because it will contain salt carried in from brining. The stock will not contain any of the customary root vegetables that are usually included to round out the body and fill out the flavor profile. Those things absorb as much as they release and they're hard to squish out without making a huge mess, plus they can all be added later as fresh vegetables when the stock is employed for other uses. This will be purely chicken stock with no vegetable material. 

I do not make a big production out of the brining. Shamefully, perhaps, but I rarely fuss over tight temperature control like I used to. I know this runs counter to every inculcated precaution. If there were a  family here to protect I would take up the neurosis that motivates all the dire warnings about not letting the brine drop below 40℉ just above freezing. Instead, for myself, I just fill a clean sink with very cold water and a cup of kosher salt and whirl it violently with an immersion blender until the salt is completely dissolved.  I could add sugar and any herbs but I usually do not bother. If chicken in water that eventually warms a few degrees bothers you, then certainly add ice, as I sometimes do, but I do not feel it is necessary for brief brining periods. There is little point in being maniacal about it. The birds are brining for no more than a few hours, and brine itself resists bacterial growth. Although, if I were running a restaurant, or if brining was to exceed a few hours, or if other guests were planned, you can bet your sweet patootie this would be happening in a covered container, iced, and refrigerated. So I am properly neurotic, I suppose -- see? It worked on me  --  just incompletely. 

The water is drained, the birds dried with a kitchen towel, then rubbed with olive oil with pepper and this time a small amount of curry, because I have a fresh batch of curry and I felt like using it. No salt, of course. The birds are rubbed inside and out. I had the oil and seasoning ready in a bowl. As it turned out, I had prepared exactly enough to cover both birds with no extra so there wasn't any waste. 

Usually I stuff the carcass with a bundle of herbs, tarragon, rosemary, sage, are my favorites. Other times I stuff it with root vegetables. I like loading it with garlic.  This time I stuffed them with lemon. 

This time, the birds were placed on a regular roaster and covered with aluminum foil breast side down. They cooked faster than I imagined they would. Turned half way through, the breasts had flattened. That's okay, the birds are not for display on the table anyway, they're to be torn apart. The skin with its flavoring will be included with the stock, not with the chicken meat. But right out of the oven like this I could not resist. I cut into a breast and ate one for dinner along with the skin. That did not completely satisfy me so I savagely tore into it again. So that night I had a few platefuls of freshly roasted chicken with no vegetables, no salad, no beer, no nuth'n. Real cave man like. Grrar. 

This is the total amount of pulled flesh from both birds minus the portion I ate on the spot. 

This is the two carcasses, completely broken up, then crushed further with pliers that I keep in the kitchen just for this. I am aiming to break open the bones to release the marrow inside to help fortify the stock. I am not certain this is necessary. It is possible that the marrow will migrate through the bone while cooking but I am not sure about that. I just feel better if I help the marrow drain out. Plus it's fun. I am not interested in cleaning all the meat off the bone to 100% maximum meat removal. It's fine with me if some stays on. I am not going to be neurotic about getting every last molecule. Although I do pick through fairly thoroughly. I don't have much patience for this part. 

The broken up bones go back into the oven to roast even further. You must do this to  believe how much flavor this adds to the final stock or broth. It is layers of roasted goodness, piled up,  that through the alchemy of Malliard add magical mysterious depth and dimension that all the prepared broths do not have. It does not take long in the oven. One doesn't have to roast for hours, just a few minutes will do, say, up to thirty minutes. You will hear the skin crackle, and the marrow drain and burn onto the pan. You will want to lift all that burned on bits using hot liquid on the stove top so that it all becomes included into the stock down to the very last singed particle. 

Again I stood there and picked through and ate the more alluring pieces of crispy skin and dry roasted chicken meat that all became apparent through roasting. I felt like crunching burnt bones like a dog.

It was all dumped  into a pot and liquid added to cover then heat to a boil. A protein foam usually forms when the liquid first boils. If this is not skimmed off, the foam boils back into the liquid and tends to impart an unpleasant bitterness. This batch foamed hardly at all. I think, because I charred all its proteins.   

A pressure cooker is certainly not necessary. It just speeds things impressively. Although large, this pot holds less than my largest regular pot. Therefore, this stock will be slightly more concentrated than otherwise. That's okay with me too. All it means is that I can use more water when the stock is used for other dishes, or that I will not have to concentrate it later for use in gravies or sauces. Plus storage is minimized. So it's a win either way. This was cooked for about an hour, longer up to two or three hours if not under pressure. 

The large bits are captured in a colander. Smashed through but not fussed over. I no longer try getting the last drop possible. Nor do I weigh it down with a plate like I used to do. That's nonsense. The most that is lost by haste is something like 1/4 cup or whatever. I'd rather get it out of the way. 

The stock is drained back to the original pot through a fine strainer. This run through captured about one tablespoon tiny bits but I forgot to photograph it before I dumped it. If I had a cat or a dog, they could have benefitted. 

This is the hot stock before it was chilled with all its fat still suspended. If it were frozen immediately, the sheet or the cubes would freeze with a layer of fat. Not altogether a bad thing, but I do not want that now. 

Chilled stock in a tall cylindrical container forms a disc of fat on the top that can be easily removed. The fat is actually quite good, schmaltz if you like, that can be used otherwise if you do not mind storing it. I saved the fat this time because I have room for it. I'll probably use it to fry potatoes. 

That this stock became fully gelatinized indicates its richness. Gelatin is a good thing. It came from the bones. Here is where I take credit for cracking open the bones. Were it layered when chilled, liquid, gelatin, fat, then that would indicate  a weaker stock. I say this because I had a friend who said he didn't know what the gelatin was so he threw it out in favor of the liquid portion below it, and that makes me sad. What a dummkopf, what a nincompoop, what an ultra-maroon.