My culinary self-education has been an ongoing process. I have many mentors (primarily in the form of cookbooks and blogs), one of the first being Mark Bittman. Years ago his article on kitchen equipment caught my eye and had me hooked. So of course I read with great interest his suggestions on what ingredients to have on hand. Most of these I already adhere to. The chicken stock suggestion, however, was one that plagued me with some guilt.
First, let me say that I flirted with vegetarianism for several years (I didn't give up seafood). This included chicken stock, or any chicken-stock based foods, and I was okay with this as I found that chicken stock sometimes made foods seem a little greasy, and vegetable broth or bouillon or even just a little salt was sufficient. That is until I read that Mark Bittman denounced canned broth and bouillon. I felt like less than a person for not using homemade chicken broth in my cooking. By this point I had accepted chicken and turkey back into my life and thought, well maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I made the stock myself. Plus he made it sound so easy. Just a few bones, some veggies and water, boil away for half an hour? Really? Really! It's a fantastic, shortcut method to making a basic chicken stock that you can use as a base for so many things like soups, stews, and risottos. Now I understand my own aversion to chicken stock came more from using canned types as opposed to fresh.
One disclaimer: I have yet to make stock from a whole chicken. However, it seems that it's okay just to use chicken parts and/or bones, even from a leftover roasted chicken. Okay, I haven't roasted a chicken yet either, so I use the bones from the whole rotisserie chicken that I buy at Whole Foods. I pull off all the skin and discard, remove all the meat for use in other recipes and put what's left in my largest pot. I add some carrot and celery pieces, parsley stalks and peppercorns, then fill the pot with water. No salt! It's easy to add salt later when you're actually using the stock. Then I set it on the stove on high heat and wait for it to start boiling. I adjust the temperature to get it to a decent simmer, cover and keep that way for about an hour. I don't think it's necessary to cover the pot, but I like to do that because otherwise, everything including my clothes smells like chicken (I live in a small apartment), and I've found that I can get the perfect simmer if I set the stove to low and cover. Bittman says just half an hour of simmering is sufficient, but if I've got the time, I'll leave it for longer. After taking it off the heat and letting it cool, I pour it through a strainer into a large bowl and discard the veggies and bones. Usually by this time it's like 10 p.m. so I stick the bowl in the fridge. The next day (usually evening, after work), I take the stock out and remove the clumps of fat that have formed and then I start using the stock (like here or here) or divide it among small containers which I freeze to use at a late date.
So it's still an all-day or overnight process, but afterwards I have 8-12 cups of stock (this one made exactly 11 cups) that I can use many different ways, for several weeks or even months, that makes my soups so much better than I thought they could be.
I have to give credit to my mother too for instilling in me the importance of homemade stock. To this day, she starts stews and soups using things like dried anchovies or kelp, and she makes a fantastic chicken soup that (someday I plan to recreate it myself) that cured me of a cold last winter (I swear).
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