I made chicken stock today for the first time. It all started two weeks ago, when I made smoked paprika roasted chicken. I knew I wanted to try making chicken stock from the leftovers, but I was starting to feel sick (I ended up having a virus, probably the flu, for the next week and a half), so I wrapped the carcass in foil and froze it. Today I finally decided to go for it. Stock takes about 4-5 hours to cook, so I needed to have a full afternoon to devote to it. I mostly followed the recipe from Alice Waters’ cookbook The Art of Simple Food. Unfortunately I did not take pictures (I promise I will from now on!), but here’s basically what I did:

Put chicken carcass in a large pot and covered with 4 quarts of cold water (that’s all that would fit in the pot). Brought to a boil, skimmed foam from top, then immediately reduced heat to simmer. Added the following:

• 3/4 onion, cut in quarters
• 1 head garlic, cut in half
• 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 bunch dried oregano (all that came from my ill-fated herb garden).
• approx. 1/2 tsp salt
• [should have added a carrot and some celery, but I was out]

Continued to skim off foam (not fat) every 15-30 minutes as it simmered. Apparently the skimming of the foam, which contains dissolved blood and other stuff, is very important for making a good stock — otherwise it will get greasy and gross. Stirred and tasted occasionally, adding more salt as I went. Alice says to do most of the salting at the end, since the flavors get concentrated as the liquid reduces.

After almost 4 hours (and several Gilmore Girls DVDs later), I strained out the solids and was left with about 2 quarts of a beautiful, golden stock. It didn’t have an extremely strong taste, but it was very good once it was salted appropriately. I probably could’ve let it cook longer, but as you’ll discover, I’m somewhat impatient for a scientist

Though I had planned to freeze some or all of it, it was so good I decided to make chicken tortilla soup. However, I was tired at this point, so I just added half a jar of really good roasted garlic salsa to the stock, seasoned it up with chile powder and some hot sauce, and added shredded cooked chicken (1 bone-in breast boiled for ~20 mins). Garnished with avocado, a dallop of sour cream, and shredded cheese, it was spicy and satisfying. Not bad for a day’s work!