Subject: RECIPE: Chicken stock
From: mcvl@decwrl (Mary-Claire van Leunen)
Date: 21 Feb 86 05:10:20 GMT
Newsgroups: mod.recipes

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.RH MOD.RECIPES-SOURCE CHICKEN-BROTH SP "2 Feb 86" 1986
.RZ "CHICKEN BROTH" "Rich homemade chicken broth"
Surely people who make use of bouillon cubes have no idea how easy home-made
broth can be.  This is not a traditional method, but it produces good
results.
.IH "makes 16 cups" "makes 4 liters"
.IG "1" "stewing chicken"
(or 2 broilers and a stick of butter)
.IG "16 cups" "water" "4 l"
.IG "1" "large yellow onion"
.IG "1" "bay leaf"
.IG "1 bunch" "parsley"
.IG "1 bunch" "fresh thyme"
(or a teaball with
.AB "\(12 tsp" "3 ml"
dried thyme inside)
.PH
.SK 1
Take one large, heavy, lidded pan\(emmine is a six-quart enamelled
cast-iron Copco pan with twenty years' good cooking already logged, and
I live in terror that yuppie burglars will break into my house some
night and steal it.
Put into it one fat old chicken.  If you live in a part of the world
where there are no fat old chickens for sale, put in two scrawny young
chickens and a stick of butter.
.SK 2
Put the pan in a cold oven, turn the temperature to
.TE 325 160
and wait patiently, doing nothing whatsoever to the chicken, for about four
hours, till it's dark golden.
.SK 3
Take the pot out of the oven and let it cool to room temperature.
Strip the meat off the bones.  Cover everything, meat and bones, with
.AB "a gallon" "4 liters"
of water at room temperature.  Add a raw onion, peeled and
quartered, a bay leaf, a bunch of parsley tied together with string,
and a small bunch of thyme similarly tied or a teaball with
dried thyme leaves in it.  Bring the water up to a simmer
and let it just simmer (make a mirror, as the French say) for ten
minutes.  Turn it off and return it to room temperature again.
.SK 4
Take the meat out.  It is not as good as it was before the wee simmer,
but perfectly satisfactory for chicken salad or on waffles with creamed
chicken or whatever.  Waste not want not.
.SK 5
Add another quart of water, bring the broth back up to a simmer and
simmer it for twenty minutes.  Strain out the bones and vegetables.
You should have about
.AB "four quarts" "four liters" .
.NX
I've never had good luck freezing
broth (it starts to taste thinnish), so this is as much as I ever make
at once.  I keep it in the refrigerator in 
.AB "quart Mason jars" "liter-size canning jars" .
I've read that you should simmer saved broth for twenty minutes every four or
five days, but it never lasts that long in my house, so I can't comment.
.PP
I use a cup wherever a recipe calls for a cup of chicken broth.  And
then, after it's been around for a day or two, somebody suggests we
really haven't had chicken soup with rice for a long, long time ... or
matzoh dumplings ... or tortellini in brodo ... and then it's all gone.
.SH RATING
.I Difficulty:
easy.
.I Time:
about 6 hours, most of it waiting.
.I Precision:
no need to measure.
.WR
Mary-Claire van Leunen
Digital Equipment Corporation, Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, CA
[email-masked]  or  decwrl!mcvl