As I am typing this, I have chicken cooking in the pot! Not for stock, but for chicken burritos. I am teaching a freezer cooking class tomorrow night and am going to demo how I do chicken burritos. This is seriously my all time favorite and go to recipe for freezer cooking! You can do so many things with them, make them so many different ways, and they are super yummy!
Anyway, I'm not talking burritos today, I want to talk cooking homemade stock. There's nothing like a pot of homemade chicken noodle soup! And if you have the homemade noodles to put in it, it is even better, but even with just store bought noodles, there is nothing like a pot of chicken noodle soup! What's even better is when it is made with homemade chicken stock!
Stock is actually really easy to make! A couple Sundays ago, I cooked a turkey. Just a normal old turkey cooked in the roasting pan. It was super yummy and made for awesome sandwiches and turkey noodle soup!
Anyway, after that dinner, I cleaned all the meat off the bones, as best I could, then put the rest of the bones into my crockpot dish with all the drippings and put it in the fridge until I could cook it down.
The following Friday, I decided I needed to cook down that turkey. I pulled it out and put the dish into the crockpot, added enough water to cover all the bones, which was almost to the top of the crockpot dish, and turned it on. It probably cooked for about 6 hours or so on low.
I decided to use the rest of the turkey and made a yummy creamy turkey and rice soup. It was especially nice that I could just use the turkey stock that I just cooked! I ladled out 4 cups of stock and then added 6 more cups (I have a large family that loves soup), added my veggies and about 1 TBS chicken bouillon for a little more flavor and cooked!
When the veggies were tender, I added the creamy roué I had made with butter, flour and 4 cups of milk, added the chopped turkey and about 2 cups of precooked rice (left over from a previous meal). My kids loved it and my hubby raved about it all night! That's when I know I've made something really good!
Well, back to our turkey...When it has cooled enough to handle the turkey, you can finish cleaning the bones, there is usually more meat still on the bones. I just put this meat back into the turkey stock, poured it all in a bowl and let it sit in the fridge overnight.
The next day, you will notice it has kind solidified. This makes it much easier to handle! Skim the layer of fat off the top, mine didn't have much, since there wasn't any skin on the bones when I cooked it down. Then I ladled 3-4 cups of stock into 1 quart freezer bags. Labeled and froze! When I want to make soup next, I will just pull one out and add about 8 cups of water and have my broth for soup!
There are many different ways to make stock and with many different items! Make stock from any kind of animal bones: chicken, turkey, beef, pork. Or make some veggie stock with water and a variety of veggies. You can also add veggies to you turkey or chicken and it will add more flavor to your stock. It's not too hard, and with the crockpot, it's super easy!
Please share how you make your stock and how you use it in recipes! I would love to hear from you!
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