The Importance of Chicken Stock

As I've mentioned recently, I've been facing issues that keep me from cooking as much as usual. Our living situation has become complicated and we're preoccupied by having to deal with a vexing set of circumstances related to our apartment.

Monday I was out at a holiday party and Santa Maria roasted a chicken that I had dressed the night before. It was just about all I could bring myself to do over the weekend, though there was one other thing I did manage to put away before going to bed on Sunday night.

I made a gallon and a half of chicken stock. It is a beautiful thing to turn water, old bones, a carrot, an onion, and a bit of celery into a flavorful base for countless dishes.

It takes me two days to complete it. This is not two days of active labor, of course. It is ten minutes of chopping, a day of unattended simmering (one of my favorite stories about stock comes from a guy I once met years ago who would put on a pot of stock before going to bed and then let it simmer all night while he and his girlfriend slept; I don't have the courage to do that), followed by ten minutes of straining out the bones and other bits, and then a day of refrigeration followed by ten minutes of skimming off the fat and ten minutes of packing it all up and placing in the freezer. 

I always have bones around to use for stock. Whenever I roast a chicken, I freeze the leftover carcass. They are there for me whenever I need to make stock.

Part of the pleasure of cooking for my family is knowing that I'm executing my domestic labors in a loving way. Occasionally Santa Maria and I will get into a disagreement over who is doing more work around the house. One of her more radical ideas is to institute a time clock, measuring the exact number of minutes spent by each of us taking care of domestic duties. I'm all for using this kind of measure, figuring that my three-hour Bolognese and my two-day chicken-stock will fill up hours and hours of labor on my part and put me well ahead of her. Fortunately, our relationship hasn't devolved to the point where we've broken out the time clock, but if that moment comes, I'll be ready.

Making chicken stock has more traditional culinary benefits, of course. It enriches everything.  The trouble with our living situation is really taxing my well-being. With all the stress in my life at the moment, I'm really glad to have the opportunity to make and freeze the stock. It makes me calm just thinking about it.

Basic Chicken Stock

• 1 or 2 chicken carcasses
• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 1 carrot, roughly chopped
• 1 stalk celery, roughly chopped

In a large soup pot, briefly sauté the onion, carrot, and celery.

Toss in the chicken bones.

Cover the bones with water.

Bring to a boil.

Reduce to a slow simmer.

Simmer for as long as you can manage, the longer the better.

Strain out the bones with a colander.

Strain the stock through cheese cloth to remove any bits of bones.

Put the pot of stock in the refrigerator for at least a day.

Remove the pot from the refrigerator. The fat will have congealed on top. Skim it off with a spoon and discard.

Freeze the stock in quart containers.