I decided to make my own chicken stock. I hate that canned/boxed stock is so full of salt. I LOVE salt. Love love love it! BUT- I don't love it in everything that I eat. I like to add it myself to things that I've made so you can actually taste it, unlike canned stock. I know that you can buy low-sodium stock, but there still is a lot of unnecessary salt in it. Plus, canned and boxed stock can be pricey- like $.70 a can or up to $4 for a box. Homemade stock costs a fraction of that! So, here is what I did:
Roasted a whole chicken.
Really surprisingly easy! I've never done this before but it was super-simple. For $3.50 I bought a small whole chicken (about 4.5 lbs)- then I seasoned it with some thyme, rosemary, bay leaves, pepper and a little salt. I stuffed the cavity with 1/2 a very small onion. Then I put it in a 350 degree oven for about 2 1/2 hours.
Oh yum. It smelled so good when I took it out! Next, I just pulled the meat off the bones, setting
aside the larger bones to put in my stock. The meat I shredded by hand and set aside to use later in a few different dishes- chicken enchiladas for one.
Made the stock.
I boiled a good amount of water. I don't know the exact amount, but it was about 2/3 of a large stock pot. I just used our RO (reverse osmosis) water because our tap water is awful, but you could use purified water or tap water if it's drinkable! Then I added the large bones I'd pulled off the chicken. There were little bits of chicken meat still attached, which added some good flavor. I also put in a teeny piece of skin to add that nice fatty taste without much fat! It was probably less than an ounce. Then I added 5 large carrots, cut into rounds, 4 stalks of celery, sliced into half-moons, and half a large onion, chopped. All this I boiled for about 2 hours.
Portioned it out.
When the stock was done and cooled a bit, I strained it through a colander into another large stock pot, then strained it back again, just to make sure that there weren't any chunks in the stock. I then portioned it out into small plastic containers- 4 that had 1 cup each, 2 with 2 cups, and 1 with 3 cups. That's right, I made 11 cups of stock for about $5! You can't buy canned stuff for that little!
The leftovers...
I didn't want to just waste the bits leftover, so along with saving all that great chicken meat, I picked out the carrots from the colander and put them in the fridge for the kids to eat. Is that weird? I tasted them and they were pretty tasty and not too mushy so I figured the kids would like them. We do our own version of Baby Led Solids, and Sim hasn't really had carrots yet because they are pretty hard and I hate the smell of cooked carrots. This is a great way to incorporate a greater variety of foods into her diet.
So now I have loads of chicken stock to use in cooking and for making soups. I am planning on making chicken and dumplings soon!
