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Comment by ac29 | Hacker News Reader

Here's a fairly simple stock recipe I've been making for a few years.

Usually I use saved chicken frames (the leftover bits from a whole chicken after cutting off the breasts and legs), but you can also get a whole chicken and cut it up into parts if you dont have anything saved. If you do use a mix with more meat, you can save the meat after making the stock for soups or salads.

For each 1 lb of chicken meat and bones you'll need:

1 quart water

1 carrot, cut into large pieces

1 celery stalk, cut into large pieces

1 garlic clove, crushed

½ onion, quartered

Herbs such as bay leaf, thyme, peppercorn

(parsley stems are a nice addition if you have some, dont add the leaves though)

Bring meat and bones to boil then reduce to a simmer, skimming froth. When clean enough, add everything else and continue simmer 2-8 hours (4 is good).

Strain, let cool a bit, portion into 1qt/1L containers, fridge overnight, skim fat once solidified. Can freeze up to 6 months.

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I keep the bones, carcasses, and other bits and pieces left over from meals and freeze them in ziplocs. I'll also toss in the gelatinous goo and other drippings from roasting whole birds, wings, or thighs. (Sometimes this is ~1/2 the volume of the resulting stock).

When there's enough, or I'm running out of space in the freezer, I plop all of that into a 8 or 12 qt stockpot, with a couple carrots, an onion and a couple stalks of celery. Enough water to be mostly full. (If it's hard to fit the frozen bits, pour near-boiling water from a kettle over it to fill the pot).

Bring to a boil, back off to a light simmer, let it go for a few hours.

Skim off the bulk of the fat, (reserve or not, I had 1/2 L for 3.5L of stock yesterday) Pour it out through a colander into a large bowl to strain the chunks, skim most of the fat out and put it in quart jars for freezing. If stored in the fridge, it's basically solid.

If you need more meaty bits, roast some wings. They've got the best mix of meat and collagen for stock.

I just toss all the solids, the meat is mostly tasteless at that point, though the dog likes the carrots. (and occasional bits of the meat)

I have, rarely to be true, had too much carrot flavor direction in the stock, so I go light on carrots. I've never had that happen with the onion or celery. My whole family are garlic fiends so there's likely going to be garlic in the terminal recipes so I never add it to the stock.

I always start it at night after 8pm and do the coarse filtering with a basket and then 3 or 4x reduction[1] first thing the next morning. I put the hot coarsely filtered, reduced stock, including the fat, in a 1 gal plastic pitcher, filtering it again with a very fine mesh sieve, and stick it in the back of the fridge, uncovered. The next morning first thing I scoop off the hardened fat that caps the top of the stock[2], and then I plop[3] the stock into a 1 gal freezer bag, slowly ease out all the air, seal it and lay it flat on a cookie sheet. Usually it's around 1/2" to 3/4" thick. This means that once hard frozen, I can pull it out of the freezer on demand, let it sit flat on the counter for maybe 15 minutes, and then bend off as much or as little of mighty fine stock as I want. Consequently I use it all the time, and stock making is a required part of our family routine. I don't care how much time and effort it costs.

[1] I've got a 25 yo Viking gas range (with a big through roof fan hood); both the overnight barely bubbling simmer (using a generic stock pot) and the vigorous boil of the reduction, using a 6 quart All-Clad copper chef saute pan, seem hard to manage, as I do almost entirely hands off, on any consumer grade electric range I've ever used.

[2] After stupidly wasting too much of my lifespan I discovered what schmaltz is and now I use the stock fat for basically sauteeing any vegetables required in a recipe. I had always tossed the chicken skin in with all the other ingredients anyway!

[3] It had better plop! All this effort and it needs to be a solid gelatin object at the end.

Pressure cooking (including the time to bring up to pressure, pressure cooking, and pressure release) can save you about 2-6 of those hours. Depending on who you talk to, it's either almost as good or perhaps better than simmering for several hours.

Highly agree with this. I was gifted an electric pressure cooker recently, and it has been a revelation for home stock making. It makes truly excellent stock in around 60-90 minutes all up.

If you're willing to wait the extra half hour for a slow pressure release, then you get a beautiful super-clear consommé-style stock because the pressurized environment means the liquid never boils. I've never achieved that in a stock pot, even if i'm being finicky about temperature control.

Any time we do a grocery store / Costco chicken, I'll just throw all the bones into a pot with water, salt, and some carrot, celery and onions (or powder). I'll let it simmer for a few hours, and turn it off an hour before I plan to go to bed so it cools off before I put it in the fridge. It's really easy, and can be turned into delicious soup later in the week.

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