Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Making stock

On the weekend I decided to make some stock. I am reading Nourishing Traditions and enjoy her take on food and nutrition. I normally use stock powder unless I have some bones left from roast chicken, but I have never been a big stock maker.

I made a chicken stock using our own celery. We have about 6 plants of celery which I use for pasta sauces, juicing, salads etc but there is lots of celery so I was glad to use a lot of it.

Chicken stock has chicken bones left from a roast, 4 carrots, 2 onions, 4 stalks celery, thyme, whole peppercorns. Cover with water. Leave to simmer for 4 - 8 hours.

Remove chicken and strain the rest through a colander into a bowl. The liquid then should be refridgerated for the fat to solidify on the top. The fat is scraped off and the stock bottled in the fridge for use that week, or frozen for later.

I deboned the chicken, spiced it up and made pie. The bones and veg went to the dogs.

For the beef stock, I roasted 1kg fatty beef bone until browned. I put them and some shin into my slow cooker. 1/2 cup of vinegar and the same veg as above. I left this on low overnight until the bones were soft.
I again strained through a colander and allowed the fat to solidfy and then poured
the beef stock into jars for use this week. The dogs were delighted with the left overs.

2 comments:

sally said...

I always thought making stock was too much hassle, till I started cooking with real stock! Ingredients in very simple recipes are lifted to be sublime!

We occasionally slaughter our own farm chickens and I always threw the odd bits to the dogs - till I spotted a recipe for stock made from chicken feet...I was a bit squeamish at first, but gave it a try and it is amazing! Very rich and flavourful - I will never waste again. If you don't have chickens - the feet are really cheap - so it is a nice alternative to buying a whole bird for stock.

no spring chicken said...

I too am reading nourishing traditions. Your post on stocks is very inspiring. So what exactly is shin. I don't recall seeing that and I'm not familiar with the term. :)