That Bag of Bones in the Freezer.....

On my first post about Roasted Chicken I wrote that I have a bag of bones in the freezer.  To me this is yet another reason to buy a whole bird.  I love a whole bird for a couple of reasons.  1.) It has been processed the least.  This is important because the fewer hands knives and what have you touch my bird, the fewer bacteria that are inevitably on said hands knives and what have you touch my bird.  2.) You get the most for your money.  Many times you are paying for someone to cut it up and put it on a fancy plastic tray.  I do not need this. I have a knife and I do not want your plastic tray.  3.) And the most important is that you can make stock out of the bones. If you have never made stock before, I think you will be surprised at how easy it is to make.  But you will also be surprised at how wonderful it tastes.


For this stock I used:

3 onions
3 carrots
3 ribs of celery
2 Tablespoons of Dried Rosemary
2 Tablespoons of Dried Thyme
3 or 4 Bay Leaves
Bag of Frozen Chicken Bones
Water

These are my veggies waiting to be chopped up. 

These are my Carrot, Celery, and Onion chopped up.  You can see I really like onion.  

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in your pot.  

Toss in your chopped onion, carrot and celery and give them a good saute.

I am using dried herbs because I don't have fresh ones on hand.  Later in the season I will be using fresh.  These are Thyme Rosemary and Bay Leaves.

Once your veggies get going good throw in the herbs.  Tossing them in now will get the oil out of them and into your stock.  Plus it will make your kitchen smell amazing.

You want your vegetables to start to caramelize.  Those dark spots on the bottom of the pot are the good stuff.  Not only will it make your stock a beautiful color, it will add a great flavor. 

It's time for the bag of bones.

Throw in your bones and cover with water.  

Bring to a good simmer. You don't want it boiling so hard it comes flying out of the pot, but you want the water moving so that it extracts all of the good stuff out of the bones and your herbs and veggies.  

I let this one simmer for almost 2 hours.  I was doing some cleaning and cooked dinner.  But you want it to get a nice color.  You are flavoring the water with all of your good veggies and bones.

Then you want to strain out all or most of your solids.  I use a colander over one of my stainless bowls.  

I think pour it through a finer sieve.  This gets anything you missed.  I like to pour mine into 13 x 9 pans.

I cool mine in these pans.  I am a huge fan of rapid cooling methods.  Earlier I talked about how I like the whole bird because it is handled the least.  This is along the same lines.  You might remember from chemistry class that the more surface area a liquid has the faster it cools.  This is important because you want your foods to travel through the "temperature danger zone" as fast as possible.  So the faster my boiling liquid at 212 degrees can get to 42 degrees the better.  Yes it is an additional pan to wash but this is a step I feel is important.  I am going to store this in the freezer and it could take me a couple of months to use it.  I also don't like the idea of pouring hot liquid into plastic containers.  It gives me the willies.  Yes that is a technical term.  Just ask my Mother.

As soon as my stock is cool enough to touch, I transfer it to my containers and head to the freezer. All but 1 of these containers holds 2 cups.  I feel that is a manageable amount of stock.  Plus I want it to freeze quickly.  Not only does a gallon of  liquid not freeze as fast as you might think, the only thing to do with that much is to make a giant pot of soup.  Now whenever I need it I can just defrost it and throw it in.  One of my favorite things about home made stock is all the flavor with very little sodium.  There is some sodium naturally in the chicken but I did not add any salt.  This way I can have all the savory goodness, and it's healthy too.