There are basically two kinds of chicken stock; brown and white. The only differentiating factor is whether or not the bones are roasted.
Note: If you’ve already read the veal stock how to; the process of making veal stock is very similar. The few differentiating factors have been highlighted in bold so you may skim through more easily.
The decision to roast the bones is dependent on the final application of the chicken stock. If you are making a traditional chicken noodle soup or chicken Veloute, a white chicken stock is needed. If you will be using your chicken stock as a rich braising liquid, either for a traditional Coq Au Vin or maybe just as a reduction sauce, I would recommend roasting your bones first.
To make a roasted chicken stock, place the chicken carcasses and bones in a roasting pan and roast in 450° oven for about 1-1.5 hours or until they are a rich golden brown. Remove the roasted bones, and place mirepoix in the roasting pan, give it a good stir to coat with the fat rendered from the bones, and place back in the oven until golden brown, (about 45-50 minutes).
An optional addition: mix a little tomato paste in with the mirepoix for added body and flavor at the ratio of 4 ounces per pound of mirepoix.
If you wish to make a white chicken stock, simply skip the roasting phase and follow the basic recipe below.
Chicken Stock Recipe
Note: If you are unfamiliar with the definition of a stock or its main components, please review the “How to Cook Stock” post before proceeding.
- 5# Chicken Bones
- 1# Mirepoix
- 8 ounces onions
- 4 ounces carrots
- 4 ounces celery
- Sachet: 5-10 Peppercorns, 5 sprigs thyme, 5 parsley stems, ½ bay leaf, 2 whole cloves
- Cover with at least 3” of water
Chicken Stock Procedure
- Place bones in an appropriate sized, heavy bottom stockpot.
- Add mirepoix. The ratio given above is just a guideline, your personal preference should make the final decision.
- Fill the stockpot with enough cold water to cover the bones by 2-3”. Cold water is used because some of the proteins contained in the bones will not dissolve in hot water. This may cause your stock be less flavorful and cloudy.
- Add your sachet.
- Heat stock on medium heat and bring to a simmer. Allowing the stock to heat slowly will help to dissolve certain proteins and will make your stock more flavorful and clear.
- Once the stock begins to simmer, reduce heat to low/med-low to maintain a slow simmer. Do not allow stock to boil or it will become cloudy and emulsify the remaining fat from the bones.
- Simmer for 4-6 hours, skimming with a ladle as necessary.
- After the stock is finished, pour through a strainer lined with cheesecloth. Discard bones, mirepoix and sachet leaving you with only the pure chicken stock.
- If you do not plan to use the chicken stock immediately, pour back into the stockpot and place in an ice bath to cool rapidly. Store in fridge for up to 5 days.
- If you are not planning on using the chicken stock in the next five days, reduce strained chicken stock by 3/4s, pour into ice cube trays and freeze. Once the cubes are frozen, remove from ice trays, place in a plastic zip bag, and store in freezer for up to 3 months.
- Your concentrated chicken stock ice cubes can be used to fortify a sauce, add flavor to soups, or make a pan sauce a la minute.
For more information, listen to the Free Culinary School Podcast Episode 2 which talks all about culinary stocks.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the podcasts. Very interesting.
Some questions about stock.
I make 5 quarts of chicken stock every few weeks and freeze it in the big freezer downstairs in a combination of 1 and 2 cup plastic containers so I can just take out the quantity I need to use at the time.
I grew up in a Jewish household, so I follow the chicken stock methodology my mother taught me which is a bit different than classic French technique. The main difference in how my mother taught me is that in addition to the mirepoix there are some root vegetables, in particular parsnip and some potato.
Questions:
1) The stock gets cloudy, likely because of the potato. Also, your podcast said not to let it come to a rolling boil, and I think I don’t control the temperature well enough and it does boil. Is there a way to clarify stock that has become cloudy? I don’t understand how the egg white method works. Can you explain this might work?
2) Again from the Jewish tradition, my grandmother always swore that chicken feet were essential to a good chicken stock. I can get them at the Chinese grocery without much difficulty. Do you have thoughts on chicken feet in stock? My grandmother always said that the feet are especially dirty so she would cover them in water, bring it to a boil, pour the water off, re-cover it with cold water then start again. Do you think this is necessary for sanitation purposes? I’m not sure such a short boil would make much of a difference anyhow, and of course the entire stock is going to simmer for hours.
3) I learned from my mother and grandmother that a good stock should be gelatinous when cooled in the fridge, and that it was important to have the right balance of bones to meat to achieve this. Any thoughts?
3) Let’s cross the globe to Viet Nam. Again, not French cooking although Viet Nam did develop a strong French tradition during the occupation years. I LOVE pho soup. Your comments about skipping beef stock and moving straight on to veal stock were interesting because pho soup is traditionally based on beef stock.
I got a well known Viet Namese cookbook out of the library and I made a pho from scratch. I dutifully went to the butcher shop and bought six pounds of beef bones. I simmered them for 6 hours, which is what the recipe asked for together with whatever other ingredients were specified.
The details of the flavourings are less important than the fact that my pho stock SUCKED. I put a lot of time and effort into it, not to mention a trip downtown to the real market to get the right kind of beef bones. The stock was watery and insipid and had none of that glorious texture and depth that I get with my tried and true chicken stock.
What did I do wrong? Was it the type of bones? Was it that I didn’t boil them long enough? The recipe called for 6 hours, which seemed like an awfully long time to me given that I generally do chicken stock in about 3 hours. But according to your podcast, maybe that’s not long enough. Was that my problem? Should I have used veal bones? ANy tips on making a good pho stock?
4) If you have to boil something for 12 hours, that’s quite difficult for the home cook unless you are willing to leave the pot on the stove unsupervised. Do you leave the stock pot on overnight or otherwise do you leave the stove on when you’re not in the kitchen to achieve the simmering times? Or is this simply more achievable because a restaurant kitchen is probably staffed 16 hours a day so it’s not a fire safety risk because the stove will never be truly unattended?
HomeCooker,
1) Most of your cloudiness is coming from the addition of starchy vegetables and allowing your stock to boil which causes the fat to be emulsified back into the stock. The clarification process of using an egg and protein raft will clarify your stock to some extent, but really it’s more trouble than its worth. It sounds like your stock has great flavor, it just my not have the best visual appeal. I would use the stock that you have right now, and then next time you make it, just don’t add starchy vegetables and don’t allow the stock to boil; and remember, skim, skim, skim.
2) Your grandmother was right. Chicken feet as well as necks go great in chicken stock because they both contain a high amount of collagen and connective tissue which is what gives a good stock flavor and body. The dissolved collagen is what makes a good stock “gel.” As for par boiling or “blanching off” the feet beforehand, some people think that its necessary to remove some of the “barnyard” taste that hooves, trotters and feet are commonly associated with. Whether or not to par cook the feet before the stock making processes is a personal preference.
3) The gelatinous nature of a stock comes from the collagen found mainly in the bones used, but can also be found in certain portions of the flesh (usually around the areas of the animal that are the most active). For me personally, I’ll always use exclusively bones for my stock since it will always be used as my base. From there I might go back and “reinforce” the flavor by adding meat trimmings and more roasted vegetables or fresh herbs to arrive at my finished soup or sauce. A stock made only with meat and no bones is a broth.
4) I don’t claim to be an expert on Vietnamese food but I do love to eat it and I have a couple of friends who have cooked it in a professional context. My best guess is that the book was using the terms “beef” and “veal” stock interchangeably. The reason why you should always use veal knuckle bones is because they contain more collagen than beef bones. This is why your stock was watery and didn’t have any body to it. Both the flavor and body of your stock comes from collagen, so using beef bones almost defeats the purpose of making the stock in the first place. Next time, I would suggest making veal stock using knuckle bones, follow the guidlines in FCS Episode 2, and simmer your bones for at least 8 hours. I would then strain off the bones and reduce the stock by at least 1/4 and maybe as much as 1/2.
5) Even in the restaurant kitchen we will leave things simmering on the stove overnight, and I also do this when making stock at home. Although I should probably through in a legal disclaimer telling you to not leave you stove unsupervised, I trust that you will make your own decisions based on your own comfort levels. When simmering a stock overnight, it is on such a low flame that as long as your kitchen is nice and clean and there is nothing around the flame, you shouldn’t have any problems.
By the way, even though I didn’t recommend using an eggshell raft in question one for clarifying your stocks, I will be doing a post on clarified stocks (consumes) in the near future. Hope this helped.
Hello!
I’m a little confused about one thing – usually after I make roast chicken or turkey, I put the carcass straight into the stock pot and make some stock. Should I be roasting the bones again before making stock, even if I roasted the whole bird, or is the roasting the bones step just for if you are using an uncooked bird?
Thanks!
Roasting the bones is only necessary if you want to make a “roasted” chicken stock. If you have already roasted the whole chicken, the leftover carcass is ready to go into the stock pot with no further roasting required.
Hi Jacob.
I’ve found your podcast on stocks great, but one thing puzzled me; the addition of cloves. I’ve never run into this before, not could I find it in any of my cookbooks. Is it a common ingredient? I use it in bechamel sauce or with cooking gammon, but never tried it in stocks.
Regards,
Mike
Having read some more I now realise that cloves are a common addition to stocks, just not one I’d ever met before. Still, that’s why I enjoy this website/podcast; there so much I’m learning.
Cheers,
M
@MDRedwood,
Yes, cloves are a traditional addition to a sachet in stocks. They add a nice little hint of background flavor, and I tend to add a little more cloves in my chicken stock, because they are a great flavor combination.
Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.
Jacob,
I love the podcast and find myself listening to different podcasts over and over again to make sure I haven’t missed anything. One question I have regarding white chicken stock is why do I need to first simmer the bones in water and then discard? I simply assumed I would be losing flavor when I discard the first pot of water. What am I losing out on if I use the same pot of water throughout the whole process?
Thanks,
Shaun
@ Shaun,
You’re absolutely right when you assume that you lose flavor from blanching your bones, but that’s sort of the point. A white stock, which is what you are making when you first blanch the bones, is made when you want a nice clear stock that has very little color and a somewhat neutral flavor.
If you’re going for a nice rich flavored stock though, roasting the bones first and then simmering directly without blanching is what you’re looking for.
there is never any mention of salt . iguess that is a no no ? what are the reasons? perhaps no real way to control because of reduction? i just want the facts from a pro not just my reasonings
You’re exactly right Mike…The reason why you don’t add salt during the cooking process is because stock is a base. When you go to reduce stock for soup or a sauce, if there is already salt in the stock, you risk losing control of the seasoning. You want to be able to reduce your stock as much as you would like without having to stop reducing because of salt content.
thanks for your quick resopnse i could get used to this! but there is another question, and i’m sure that somewhere you have answerd this before somehow. but to make sure my understanding of this stock and sauce making business is clear, an espagnole sauce is made from an incredibly reduced stock. (and obviously other things but i am just confused about how some of these things relate )
i forgot my question mark?
@ Mike,
Traditionally Espagnole is One Part Brown Stock + One Part Brown Sauce (Brown Stock Thickened With Brown Roux), reduced by half. The full reduction sauce was based on Espagnole, when during the Nouvelle Cuisine Revolution chefs started to lighten their sauces by taking out the cream and roux, instead opting for natural thickening by reduction.
For more information, check out this link:
http://freeculinaryschool.com/category/sauces/mother-sauces-sauces/espagnole/
thanks jacob i thought i was going crazy with the whole saucy stocky thing ya know what i mean. ireall appreeciate what your doing i am able to learn thigs in a flash that i wondered about for sometime now. thank
No problem Mike…Happy to help
Latecomer here. I am curious on the preperation needed for the vegetables. Should they be peeled? Sliced? Chopped?
For chicken stock, usually 1/2″ to 1″ chunks, and for veal stock usually 2″ chunks.
Chef Jacob,
What are your thoughts on using prepared, concentrated Demi-glace, veal stock, etc from commercial outlets like More than Gourmet and Club Sauce?
I find them so convenient and they save so much time and effort.