Storing Chicken Stock
Last weekend was chilly and gray. Since it felt like fall, I decided to roast a chicken (which is surprisingly easy to do) and make pumpkin pie.
One of the nicest things about roasting a whole chicken is that the bird just keeps on giving. One 4-5 pound chicken will provide dinner for 4, chicken salad for 2 for lunch the next day, and chicken stock to make a big pot of soup for dinner another night.
After dinner, I picked all the meat off the bird and put it aside to make curried chicken salad the next day. Then I threw the carcass into a big pot, added a bunch of water, some chopped carrots and onion, parsley, cilantro, a few bay leaves, and salt and pepper. I simmered it all for an hour or so on medium heat to make chicken stock. I turned it off and let it sit for a few hours.
Once it was cool enough, I removed the bones and strained the stock through a fine meshed sieve to remove all the veggies and herbs and bits of chicken. I was left with about four pints of organic chicken stock. I poured half of it into clean empty yogurt containers, labelled the tops with the date and the contents, and put them in the fridge to cool down some more.
I decided to try storing the remaining two pints of stock as ice cubes - a trick I had read about a few times. Having the stock in ice cube-form gives you much greater flexibility over how much you have to defrost at any given time. The cubes are small so they defrost quickly. You can just throw a few into a saucepan if you need to add stock but don't want to add an entire pint of liquid.
One of the nicest things about roasting a whole chicken is that the bird just keeps on giving. One 4-5 pound chicken will provide dinner for 4, chicken salad for 2 for lunch the next day, and chicken stock to make a big pot of soup for dinner another night.
After dinner, I picked all the meat off the bird and put it aside to make curried chicken salad the next day. Then I threw the carcass into a big pot, added a bunch of water, some chopped carrots and onion, parsley, cilantro, a few bay leaves, and salt and pepper. I simmered it all for an hour or so on medium heat to make chicken stock. I turned it off and let it sit for a few hours.
Once it was cool enough, I removed the bones and strained the stock through a fine meshed sieve to remove all the veggies and herbs and bits of chicken. I was left with about four pints of organic chicken stock. I poured half of it into clean empty yogurt containers, labelled the tops with the date and the contents, and put them in the fridge to cool down some more.
I decided to try storing the remaining two pints of stock as ice cubes - a trick I had read about a few times. Having the stock in ice cube-form gives you much greater flexibility over how much you have to defrost at any given time. The cubes are small so they defrost quickly. You can just throw a few into a saucepan if you need to add stock but don't want to add an entire pint of liquid.
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