The Best Way To Make Chicken Stock

I'm Adrienne Cheatham.

I'm a professional chef

and today I'm gonna show you the best way to make stock.

[water splashing]

This will be a one pot wonder full of chicken bones

and my favorite vegetables to make stock.

This is chicken stock 101.

[upbeat music]

You might think of just soup when you think of stock

but it can literally be used in so many things.

Curries, braises, stews,

risotto, hand sauces, jus, rice,

the list goes on and on.

Stock is almost as essential in cooking

as salt and pepper or oil for sauteing.

So in kitchens, it's typical to have

some on hand in the freezer,

already made for whenever you need it.

Stock comes together from bits and pieces

that you would normally throw away in the trash.

So not only are you using the whole animal

but you're also saving money.

[upbeat music]

So today we're using chicken bones

and you can use the bones of anything to make your stock.

You can use shrimp shells,

pork bones, turkey bones whatever

but you wanna go for parts

that have a lot of connective tissue and a lot of bone.

That's where you're getting

all the good stuff for stock from.

Rib cages, chicken feet,

necks, heads, chicken backs, chicken wings.

Guess what?

Chicken butt. [chicken squawking]

Here we have three pounds of chicken bones.

If you have a rotisserie chicken or leftover cooked chicken,

by all means, save the bones and throw it in also.

It is best to have some kind of raw bones, at least 50%

because you're gonna get much more

collagen and gelatinous stock that way.

You can definitely use the skin,

it will bring a lot of fat to your stock.

所以你只需要小心些而已

and make sure that that doesn't emulsify into the liquid,

'cause it'll make it cloudy

but organs you wanna stay away from.

They have a lot of oxygenated blood in them

and they can make your stock

very heavy in flavor and iron-y.

I don't want an iron-y stock.

[upbeat music]

Here we have classic mirepoix,

celery, carrots, onions plus some parsley stems.

Mirepoix is pretty much the French version

of standard vegetable mixture

that goes into all soup, stews and stocks.

Mirepoix is typically two parts onion

to one part carrot and one part celery.

You can definitely use anything in your refrigerator

that's not so fresh anymore

and needs to get used before being thrown away.

But if it's not one of these three vegetables,

it might give your stock a little bit of a stronger flavor.

One of the good things about making stock

is that your mirepoix is not the time

to focus on knife cuts.

You can literally just cut them in half

and throw them in the pot

because they're gonna simmered long enough

to extract the flavor anyway

and then they get strained out.

So who cares what they look like?

[upbeat music]

We have a big ass pot.

A lot of water and our mirepoix and bones.

We're gonna fill it with two gallons of water,

that's eight quarts.

And then very technical here,

add your vegetables.

Boom, boom.

Then you wanna add your bones.

You're literally just gonna put

everything in the pot together.

You want all those bits and pieces of bone and fat.

Now, remember we are making stock,

we're not making soup right now

so I'm not gonna add seasoning

or too many other strong flavored ingredients

because I want this to be flavorful but neutral enough

to use for whatever else I have in store.

So you see that we're starting to get

some movement in the water, it's very exciting.

So I'm gonna turn the heat down

because I don't want all this fat and foam to emulsify,

I want it to coagulate on the surface so I can skim it off.

So I am gonna push this a little bit off

so it's not centered on the burner.

If it's centered on the burner,

you're gonna have even heat

all around the perimeter of the pan,

which means you're gonna get movement

around the whole perimeter of the pot as well.

We don't want that.

We only want movement on one side

so that everything else can gather on the other side,

that'll make it that much easier to skim

and keep our stock clear

because it won't be rolling into the liquid the whole time.

This is a skimmer.

It is a fancy tool to use for skimming.

This is just gonna make it a little bit easier

to lift off the fat and the foam

without taking too much of the good stuff underneath.

You wanna check on it and give it a skim

every 20 minutes or so.

But then once you've gotten

most of the fat and the foam off the top,

you're good to let this go for another four hours or so.

[Adrienne humming]

Okay, this is very exciting.

Stock is made with bones,

broth is made with meat.

Broth you can make in 30 to 45 minutes

because you're just cooking it until the protein is cooked

and then you're straining off the liquid.

The stock itself you're cooking it low and slow for hours

because you're literally melting the collagen

in the bones and the cartilage.

A little simmer.

While you're waiting for your stock to come to a simmer

and cook fully, you can have a glass of wine.

You could probably have a bottle of wine.

Play with your dog.

You could make some tacos.

You could order takeout, watch TV, bake some cookies, yes!

You could go for a quick jog around your living room.

I am not gonna be responsible

for somebody setting their house on fire.

So this stock has been on for about six hours

and this is what you want it to look like.

You have a deeply colored liquid and it's still clear.

So now we're gonna strain it and store it

so we can get an even better look.

I try not to press too much on the solids here

because I'm not trying to press out

any remaining foam or skuz,

so I don't wanna push any solids through

that would get into our stock.

So as you see, the color is much deeper and richer

from where we started and it's taken on all that flavor

and aroma from our ingredients.

So as you can see, the fat is kind of floating on the top

in a thin layer.

The best way to get this off without skimming off

any of your stock underneath

is to just cover this

and chill it overnight.

The fat is gonna congeal on the surface into one hard piece

that you can just lift off in the morning.

You can save that fat for cooking for another use

but once you have this container of defatted stock

just cover it back up with the lid,

pop it in the freezer and you can keep it

for up to three months.

[upbeat music]

Homemade stock might seem like a daunting project

but it's really not.

You kind of just set it and almost forget it.

It's very healthy, it's inexpensive.

And it's a great way to create

a no waste kitchen in your own home

because you're using things

that would otherwise get thrown away

to create something beautiful

and flavorful that can get used in so many things.

Oh, smells good.

God that smells good.

It's like a warm hug from a big chicken.

[chicken squawking]

Oh yeah.

Mixmaster. [laughing]