This weekend we started with Chicken Stock. You may think Chicken stock begins with chicken bones, but that is where you would be wrong. For us it started with a new freezer. We picked up our new stand up freezer Friday afternoon. CHECK!
The next step was stock pots. The small one on the right was what we already had - a large 6L stock pot that most people would think was adequate for the job. But if you know us you know that we don't do anything half way. We decided that the big boy 32L pot was what we needed. BIG Stock Pot. CHECK!
Now we look at ingredients. Chicken stock is pretty basic - chicken bones (we use chicken backs and necks), water, mirepoix (fancy French word for cut up mixture of carrots, onions, and celery) spices, and seasoning. That is it. Ingredients - CHECK!
Simmer forever - or 4 hours.
Mmmmmmm - smells yummy in the house. CHECK!
Strain, strain again with cheesecloth and rapid cool to avoid bacteria growth - portion and into the fridge overnight so the fat layer will harden for easy removal. Now this sounds pretty straight forward... wish it were so.
Start by trying to strain 8lbs of chicken bones, 1 lb of vegetable matter and 5.75 litres of water - all boiling HOT, out of a 32L very hot, big, bulky, and heavy pot. That was a feat in itself and we accomplished it with no major burns and only a few four letter words (no love was not one of them) Once we got all the strained liquid into the small 6 L pot from the photo above we had to cool it quickly from it's very hot 175 degrees F temp to 40 degrees F. Normally you would accomplish this in an ice bath - but 6 L of boiling liquid requires more ice that our freezer holds. We were able to get the temp down to about 110 F and ran out of ice. Ingenious as we are we took advantage of the disgustingly cold Thunder Bay night and stuck the stock pot in the snow on our deck. 5 min later we were out of the danger zone and the stock was cool enough to portion and put in the fridge. Portion and refrigerate. CHECK!
That is all for now - I need to get into the kitchen and skim off the fat layer. Then the stock will go into the new freezer for a couple of weeks just waiting for soup production.
