Happy Sunday! In my house, it is usually “Soup Sunday”, add the fact that Fall is here, and it’s soups galore time! I absolutely love, love, LOVE making soup and bread! I adore my time in the kitchen kneading dough and chopping colorful vegetables. My favorite soups are Butternut Squash Soup and Rustic Italian Tortellini Soup. I usually pair them with a good crusty beer bread or a fragrant rosemary herb bread and if I’m feeling fancy - I do bread bowls.
In my endeavor to make tasty food that my family will eat, I realized that I needed to obtain a basic recipe that I can make well and then I can put my own twist on it. I decided to start with basic elements with Y'all and work my way to the actual recipe (like the two soups above!) so when my recipe calls for something like homemade chicken stock, Y'all know what I’m talking about and how to get there because I’ve laid the foundation for you as I did for myself!
Chicken stock is this magical little liquid that takes normal water and turns it into a nutrient-rich, and flavorful addition through simmering with meat and vegetables, or just vegetables, and is a great addition or the main star in a lot of recipes!! Chicken stock can be used in soup, sauces, rice, and grains - you can really add it to just about anything for a little more hit of flavor.
Stock is prepared using the bones of a chicken whereas broth is prepared using the meat. To make stock you simmer the bones for a long time which will release the gelatin that will produce a richer flavor.
After today you need to start a gallon freezer bag in your freezer that you add to as necessary of all your vegetable/herb scraps - celery ends, carrot tops/shavings, remainder of fresh herbs -- EVERYTHING - you add this to your stock when making and that way its really frugally prepared as opposed to going out to pay to make the stock - and somehow that makes it taste better haha!
My local grocery store will mark down split chicken breast to as low as 89 cents a pound sometimes! It is like the Black Friday of chicken when they do that and I load up my cart with as many packages as I can and freezer bags too! For every 6 bone-in skin on chicken breasts you process, you will yield about 2.5lbs of bones and scraps - you paid for those, do not throw them away! If you do not know how to break down a chicken breast now is the time to learn! You can save an incredible amount of money and result with a breast, a tender and bones to make a stock! Here is a video to show you how! I remove the skin by simply just pulling it off with my hands after too, as I want boneless skinless breasts.
I set up with my non-porous chopping board, (anytime you work with raw meat you should be using a non-porous chopping board), a sharp boning knife, a paring knife works well too, and 3 bowls; 1 very large to put the breasts all in as I process them, 1 medium sized bowls to put the tenders in and 1 large to put the bones, skins and trimming scraps in. When I finish processing all my split chicken breasts I bag the breasts 2 at a time in a quart freezer bag, then I bag the tenders all in a gallon freezer bag because our family eats them like crazy so I make one large batch of tenders. With the bones and scraps I either bag them in a gallon or 2 freezer bag and freeze until I’m ready to make a stock or I go right into making the stock throwing in all my vegetables in my fridge that need to get used up and/or grabbing my frozen bags of vegetable scraps from the freezer that are there specifically for this purpose!
Let me know in the comments what fridge items you added, this is also a great way to use up many fresh herbs you have sitting around such as parsley and thyme!
Kitchen Scrap Chicken Stock Recipe
Yield: About 4 Quarts
Time: 4 Hours
12-15 Lbs of chicken bones/discards (about 16-20 processed chicken breasts)
2 TBLS Peppercorns
2 TBLS Salt
Your bag of kitchen scraps, and any looming around in your fridge.
Dont have scraps? heres a good idea of what to use:
4 Carrots rinsed and broken into 3’s
8 stalks of celery rinsed with leaves intact broken into 3’s
2 onions (yellow or sweet are best but use what you have) unpeeled chopped into quarters
6 garlic unpeeled chopped in half (optional)
Add all the ingredients and any additional items you desire to a large stock pot and cover with about an inch of water.
Bring to a boil then reduce and simmer for 4 hours.
After it has simmered remove from heat and let it sit for about 45 minutes or until it is cool enough to handle.
When cooled, strain through a large mesh strainer into a very large pot or bowl taking care not to burn yourself or others.
Discard the solids and separate the stock into quart bags for easy recipe use then freeze!
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