Chicken Stock Simplified

I used to think making chicken stock was 1) a pain in the ass, and 2) something only for the hardcore chef.

This probably comes from the fact that I first learned to make stock from a fancy Williams Sonoma cookbook and the instructions involved a precise list of ingredients, including a stewing chicken, and activities like monitoring a simmering pot for a couple of hours on the lookout for any "scum" that might rise to the top and quickly removing it at first sight, then straining it with a cheesecloth (I never have any cheese cloth), then skimming off fat.  While this is probably the correct way to make it if you are running a professional kitchen, it's not very practical.

Once I realized that chicken stock is basically cooking to death some leftover chicken parts and seasonings and then straining it, I now use up every roasted chicken carcass this way.  For some reason, I get satisfaction out of the fact that I've used the whole bird, even the bones (ok, I'm not using the heads, feet, and feathers yet, but give me some time . . .).

So, to break down the process a bit, first take all the usable meat off the chicken and save that for something tasty.  As you're pulling everything off the chicken, take any skin or pockets of fat and get rid of those.  What you'll have left is the bones, some cartiledge, and some tiny bits of chicken stuck to it.  If your chicken came with giblets, you can add these to the pile of bones.  This process does leave you're hands very chickeny, but think of it as a fancy farm-spa treatment.

(Usable chicken in the box on the left, meaty carcass on the right)

At this point, decide if you really have time to make chicken stock.  If you don't, toss the carcass in a bag and toss it in the freezer and deal with it later.

If you do, check the kitchen and garden for things you can season it with.  Anything from this list will do, with the more common ingredients listed first:

• Onions or leeks, any kind
• Carrots
• Celery
• Peppercorns
• Bay Leaves
• Thyme
• Parsley
• Oregano
• Garlic
• Parsnips, turnips or other root vegetables
• Ginger
• Rosemary (go easy on this one)
• Fennel
• Mushrooms
• Tomatoes
• Bell Peppers or chili peppers
• Potato peelings

A great thing about stock is that you can use the peels or leafy tops of the veggies that you wouldn't normally use.  Also, if you have some vegetables that have lost their spark and gone a bit limp, these are fine too.  Just make sure whatever you throw in the pot is clean. In other words, you can empty the fridge and use anything that isn't quite appetizing any more but is still good.  I wouldn't skip the onion, but the rest of the combination changes every time I make it.

I would probably avoid tossing in much cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower, mainly because the sulfur smell might overpower the rest, but even that's not a hard and fast rule.

Once you've rounded things up, you're ready to toss them in the pot.  You do not need to finely chop anything.  I usually just quarter the onion, chop the rest in a few good chunks, smash a couple garlic cloves with the side of my knife, and toss the herbs in stem and all.

Then, add enough water to your pot to cover everything and bring to a boil.  Once it has boiled, turn the heat down as low as possible, and let it simmer for at least an hour and a half, or up to four hours, depending on your patience and your gas bill.  I usually put the lid on but sometimes I forget.

If you happen to pass by the pot, you can use a spoon or small strainer to scoop off any nasty looking foam (or "scum") that has risen to the top, but as you are probably not on a cooking show, even this step isn't strictly necessary.  Doing so will make your broth clearer and more refined.  Not doing so will keep you saner.

Once it's all done, add at least a teaspoon of salt or so to taste (you can add it up front, but I find it easier to check the taste once the rest is done stewing).  Then pour the broth through a strainer into another pot or a pitcher.  It might be easier to pull some of the big pieces out before straining.  If you're anal, strain it with a cheesecloth.  If not, any mesh strainer will do.  If you don't have a mesh strainer, line a colander (strainer with big holes) with a cloth and strain it through that.

Now you have your own chicken stock.  If you're not going to use it all in the next couple of days, toss the rest in the freezer.  If I'm not planning on making a soup right away, I usually keep a cup on hand in the fridge for rice, curries, simmering vegetables, etc., and freeze the rest.

If you put it in the fridge, you will notice once it's cold that there is a layer of fat on the top.  If you don't like this (or you left some skin in and there's quite a lot), use this opportunity (while it's cold) to scoop it off.

A couple of tips:
1) Don't be greedy.  It's tempting to put one small chicken carcass in a giant pot and fill with water.  This will give you a very weak stock.  If you did this, you can still use it, but if making soup, you might want to cheat a bit and add a touch of chicken bouillon.
2) Be patient.  Too often I try to make the stock in an hour or so and immediately make soup.  Again, the stock turns out weak and then so does the soup.  The best time to make stock is when you're at home doing something else so you can just forget about it for a couple of hours.  Which is why some of my chicken carcasses now live in the freezer until I get the chance . . .

Leftover bird

So now that you've roasted your chicken, what to do with what's left?

Even if you think you ate most of it - look again.  Those scraps leftover are perfect for one of my rediscovered favorites, the humble chicken salad sandwich.  Don't worry, we're not talking the gross gluey glob of greasy spoon lunch counters, but an actual chicken salad made with roast chicken and whatever else you have on hand that actually tastes good.

The formula is simple - cut of bits of chicken, fruit, veggies, nuts, or herbs and enough mayo or other condiments to make it hold together.  A couple of my favorite combos:

Chicken, apple, red onion, tarragon, mayo, and dijon.
Chicken, dried apricot bits, sage, walnuts, and mayo.
Chicken, olives, tomatoes (sun dried are especially nice).
Chicken, bacon, blue cheese, avocado.

Using the right ingredients (and properly roasted chicken as your start), and suddenly the chicken salad sandwich is something you actually want to eat.

If you have a bit more or just want something warm, here are some other ideas for the leftover chicken:

Saute some veggies, garlic and herbs in olive oil and add to pasta.
Make a burrito, tacos, or enchiladas.
Use as a topping for a pizza.
Make a stir-fry or a curry.
Make a chicken noodle soup (we'll cover soup stock later).

While most of these are simple foods, they will all taste better when the chicken has been roasted.

I decided to make a sandwich for lunch (chicken, apricot, walnut, sage, and mayo) and a curry for dinner.
To make a curry, you can either saute vegetables, add a store-bought (cheater) sauce to simmer until the veggies are done, then toss in bits of the roast chicken, and heat through.

While jarred curry sauces are not cooking from scratch, if you can find one you like made without all of the preservatives, it can be a great way to cook a large amount of vegetables, use up leftover bits of chicken, and still have something people will eat in a pinch.

I've been experimenting lately with trying curry from scratch and came up with the following: First I toasted some ground almonds and caraway seeds (to be honest, I accidentally dumped half the bottle of caraway seeds not realizing it did not have a sprinkle top and had to fish them out of the hot pan - doh!).  Then, I added some coconut oil (butter or other oil would work just fine), chopped garlic, onion, and ginger and sauted.  Then I added a couple of teaspoons of garam masala spice (other curry blends would work) and some extra chile powder and flakes.  Once everything was well-coated in spice and it formed sort of a paste, I tossed in some chopped potatoes and tomatoes and enough chicken stock to just cover.  I let the potatoes go for about 5 minutes, then added carrots.  After another 10-15 minutes, I added some greens (kale) and then finally topped off with the leftover chicken and a good-sized splash of cream.

Curry.  Of sorts.  It did turn out tastier than the jarred version :)

Chicken Salad Sandwich
(Bad picture, good sandwich)

You’ve got to know your chicken

Sorry to the vegetarians this week.  We’re going to go over the basic roasted chicken.

Why?  Because by roasting a chicken, you can make several decent meals throughout the week (if you buy a big enough bird). Because it’s fall, and anything roasted sounds good.  Because for some reason, as a meat-eater, I’m more comfortable with eating the whole bird rather than just buying cut up little bits of breast meat and never thinking about what happens to the rest of it.  And because it shouldn’t be scary.

Ingredients:

A chicken

Salt

That’s it. 

The Dry Brine

I’ve found the best (and simplest) way to roast a bird is through a process called dry brining.  I attribute this knowledge to Russ Parsons, who for the past three or four years has written articles on dry brining your thanksgiving turkey for the Los Angeles Times and appears on the local public radio around that time explaining the process.

Unlike wet brining, which requires a bucket of salt water large enough to hold your bird and a refrigerated place to put it, dry brining consists of rubbing salt on the bird.  Also, I happen to like the texture of the meat better after dry brining.

Parsons’ formula is to rub about a tablespoon of salt per 5 pounds of bird and then let the bird sit in the refrigerator for 3 days.

I’ve seen several explanations for what is exactly happening during this time, but the simplest seems to be that the structure of the protein in the chicken is changed by the salt in such a way that the cells will hold moisture at a higher temperature and thus the meat will turn out moister.

For your basic chicken, while the formula does lead to an incredibly moist and flavorful  chicken, it’s not necessary to go quite that far for a tasty roast.  Chickens, for one, don’t have the nasty reputation that turkeys do of drying out.  Chickens are smaller and less meaty, so the skin does a better job of keeping it moist.

Nonetheless, two things can be learned from this: salt liberally and salt early.  For a medium-sized bird, when you  rub salt all over it, don’t just shake a few crystals on but aim for about a teaspoon of salt.  And the earlier you can do this, the more time the salt will have to work its way throughout the bird rather than just staying on the skin.

Of course, this doesn’t always happen.  Ideally, when you buy the bird, rub the salt on, toss it back in its bag and cook it a couple days later.  More often than not though, I find myself doing this the night before or in the morning before I go to work.  It still works.  It’s a chicken.

The Roast

Turn the oven up high – very high.  Around 450 F or so.

Once your bird is salted, you’ve got to truss it (unless it came that way). Trussing is just basically tying its legs & wings down so the whole thing is a compact ball of bird.  If you haven’t already, check inside the bird to make sure there’s not a bag of goodies – the giblets.  If there is, save these parts for a broth, cooking later, or feed them to a pet.

Then, with some cotton string (nothing that will melt like nylon) wrap around the ends of the legs a few times, cross over or under the body, and wrap across the wings.  Pull tight and tie a knot.  You can use this configuration or anything else that keeps things from flopping around.  There’s no right way.

Now pop this bird into a roasting pan.  If you don’t have a pan with a rack in the bottom so the chicken is not left to swim in its own juices, get a regular pan and chop some chunks of potatoes, onions, or other veggies to make a platform for your chicken to be propped up on.  Then place the chicken with the breast side up in the pan on the veggie chunks or rack.  If you’re not sure which side is the breast, look for the tail – that’s the opposite side and should be down.

Cook it in the oven at the high heat for 15-20 minutes to give the skin a head start in the browning, then lower the oven temperature to about 350 or 325 (low-medium).  Once it’s been in there an hour or hour and a half or so it’s probably done.  The first few times you do this, you might want to use a meat thermometer.   Stick the thermometer in the meatiest part of the chicken (breast or thigh, just look for thick meat) and once it reads 165 F, it’s safe to serve.

If you don’t have a thermometer, once the juices run clear (no blood), you’re good to go.  Once you’ve done it a few times, you’ll get a feel.

You’re done – you’ve roasted a bird.  I usually toss some chopped up veggies with garlic, olive oil, and herbs, and roast those at the same time.

Next up, what to do with the leftovers . . . 

(Small bird, large pan)

Pizza is important

Why is pizza important?  Two reasons:  Everybody but the grouchiest curmudgeon loves pizza and it's a really good way to use up random bits of food.

First, the crust.  While I promised to free you from recipes, see rule #5 in the first post.  Admittedly, baking provides its own set of challenges, so unless it's your profession, you probably need to somewhat adhere to a formula to ensure that it's food and not glue that you end up with.  Luckily, pizza is something that I make often enough that I can remember the ratios without looking them up. You could probably just put the amounts on a post-it note inside of a cupboard.

• 3 cups flour (plain all-purpose, though you can substitute up to half for wheat flour or bread flour)
• A packet or a bit less than a tablespoon of instant yeast (you can use the kind you add to water to proof, but its harder and won't make a noticeable difference)
• At least a teaspoon of salt (do not skip)
• One tablespoon of olive oil (or other oil or melted butter)
• One tablespoon of honey or sugar (optional)
• One cup of warm water

Mix the dry ingredients together, then everything else.  If the dough is too sticky, add some more flour.  If you can't get it to come together add some more water. Either way, add a very small amount at a time.  You can also throw in some chopped fresh or dried herbs if you're fancy.

Once you have a nice dough ball, knead for 5 minutes. Kneading is basically shoving it around and squashing it - there's no right way as long as you are not tearing up the dough. Most people use a floured surface. I usually knead it directly in the bowl I made it in or knead it in my hands since I'm too lazy to clean the floured surface at this point.

Put it back in the bowl, cover with a towel or plastic wrap, and leave for about an hour until it's twice its size. Alternatively, throw it in the fridge and deal with it tomorrow. Or throw it in the freezer and deal with it whenever.

Once it has doubled in size, fold the dough a few times to return it back to its original size and squash the air out. You're now ready to go.

Turn the oven on as high as it will go - it'll need at least 15-20 minutes to get anywhere near hot enough.

This recipe will make 4 small pizzas, 3 medium, or two biggish pizzas. If you can't eat it all now, make it all now and take the rest with you to work tomorrow for lunch. Or the dough will keep two days in the fridge and indefinitely in the freezer.

Flour a work surface (i.e. the counter) and divide the dough into however many pizzas you are making. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin (or wine bottle if you don't have one) and place either on a greased tray large enough for the pizza base, or, for the fancy, on a heated baking stone with polenta (course corn flour) sprinkled on it.

My baking stone is actually a large terra cotta flower pot base that I got cheap at the hardware store when I decided to bake a bunch of bread. We do one pizza on this and the others on regular metal tray. The one on the stone is easier to get off, but not much other difference.

The sauce:
You don't need pizza sauce.  Leftover pasta sauce (red, white, pesto) will work, as will BBQ sauce, pureed tomatoes, or just plain olive oil brushed on with some chopped garlic and herbs.  The point of the pizza is to get rid of the stuff in your fridge, not add to it.  You can even skip the sauce.

The toppings:
This is the true beauty of the pizza - anything goes.  Here is where you get to look at what you have and imagine what flavors go well together and work with it.  If you're a mediocre gardener like me, and don't know how to highlight that one pathetic eggplant you managed to grow this year, put it on a pizza.

Some tips:

• Meat should be cooked.  Bacon makes most things better, but leftover chicken, sausage, carne asada, salmon (if there is such a thing as leftover salmon) are all great.  Deli meats are also fine.
• Vegetables - while raw is fine, if you have leftover grilled or sauted veggies, these are even better. Pickled and canned ones work as well (corn, olives, etc.), as does salsa. You could probably even put leftover chinese or other takeout food on it and be fine.
• Cheese - mozzarella, while delicious, is not the only good cheese on pizza.  In fact, it doesn't even have to melt to be good.
• Herbs - add some if you have some growing or have some leftover.  Garlic or ginger are also nice if you like strong flavors.

Now that you have your truly stunning flavor creation, put it in the oven for 10-12 minutes - or as long as you can without burning it.
That's it.

(Fortunately our pizza baking skills are better than our photography skills.  Note to self, no more pictures of partially-eaten food.)

A note on gourmet ingredients

You've been there before.  You're at a lovely outdoor market where they're selling olive oil infused with the joyful tears of angels or vinegars distilled from the nectar of the gods.  You sample.  You agree.  It really is the shizzle.  So when can you justify spending $10-$20 on a bottle of salad dressing ingredients?

You can't.  At least not if it's for yourself.  Let's be clear, such ingredients cannot reasonably fit into most people's weekly food budget, despite what the cooking shows or the recipe books are telling you. I buy my olive oil in large tanks from the grocery store and the you wouldn't be fooled by the quality.

On the other hand, there is definitely a time for the premium ingredients, but we generally call these birthdays, Christmas, etc.  In fact, in this day and age when most people have too much stuff cluttering up their lives, a consumable gift of top quality is generally appreciated and is probably not something the recipient would normally purchase.  Couple this with the fact that many of these products are made by artisans or your neighbors in small quantities and you have a feel good gift all around.

Case in point, a friend of ours recently gave the SO a bottle of excellent balsamic vinegar for his birthday that she picked up at a market. For the next couple of weeks we'll be thinking of her as we dip our bread in it and gluttonously try to get every last drop out of that bottle.

(Not long for this world)

If you are the lucky recipient of such finery, by all means, do not squander it. Food goes bad, you know. Eat it, relish it, and don't feel like you have to wait for a special occasion.  Life is meant to be lived.

The Crumble

If you've ever bought a lot of a fruit on sale, went apple or berry picking, participate in a produce box scheme, or were just enamored at the farmer's market, you will at one time or another, have found yourself with too much fruit.

This time, it was apples.  Now that I live in London and farmers' markets are tougher to come by, we participate in a veg box scheme (known in Cali as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes), which means we get a box of organic produce delivered weekly, with as much of the produce being local as is possible in Britain.

Being Britain, right now that means we're getting a lot of apples since not much else fruit is growing right now.

(Note: if you photograph your food in black dishes, it looks fancy)

As I'd already made a quiche and a tart this week, I'd had enough of crusts. When I asked the SO what else he like for dessert, he suggested a crumble.

A crumble, similar to a cobbler or a crisp, is basically cooked fruit with crumbly goodness on top.  While baking involving yeast or other leavenings takes a bit of science, crumbles don't.

Peel and chop up fruit and season it with sugar and whatever else you like.  Mix together flour, sugar, and butter with your fingers till you have crumbs.  Throw the fruit in a baking dish and toss the crumbs on top.  Bake until the top is brown, not black.

1. Filling
Fruit - apples, pears, berries, apricots, peaches, or a mix, perhaps with some dried fruit tossed in.
Sweetener - sugar (brown or white), honey (go easy on this one), molasses (not very sweet), maple syrup, or a combination.
Spice - cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, clove, pinch of salt, vanilla, a squeeze of lemon or lime juice, tiny bit of finely grated lemon or lime rind, booze (go easy), or any combination that seems tasty to you and you have on hand.

Mix these in a bowl till you have a gloppy mess and put in the bottom of a baking dish.

2. Crumble
Flour - regular white or wheat.  About half a cup or mugful or more depending on the size of baking dish you're using and how much crumble you want.
Butter - roughly the same amount, start with about 2/3s a stick or so, at room temperature (not melted) and chop it into smaller pieces.
Sugar - anywhere from a couple of tablespoons to about equal to the flour, depending on how you like it.
Optional - rolled oats, muesli, or other grains; chopped, flaked, or ground nuts of some sort.

Mix these ingredients with your fingers or a fork until you get a crumbly texture and put on top of the fruit mixture.  If it refuses to crumble, you can break it up into small pieces when you add it on top.

Bake in a medium oven (350ishF) for 30-40 minutes, until brown.  Top with cream or ice cream.

Here's what I went with based on what I had lying around:
Apples, cinnamon, brown sugar, honey, chopped up crystallized ginger for the filling, squeeze of lime juice.
Regular flour, butter, white sugar, oats, ground almonds, chopped walnuts for the top.

(Yum)

First Post

As this is the first post, I'll lay some ground rules:

1. Cooking should involve real ingredients, which can usually be substituted for other real ingredients.

2. Most of us have to follow someone else's directions in our jobs, so we should be able to do whatever we want when we cook.

3. Cooking with what's available and in season is easier, cheaper, and more adventurous.

4. Using leftovers in a meal can actually make it taste better and requires less shopping.

5. Although it is possible to cook most foods without a recipe or measuring, baking can be another story.


And now onto the food . . .