If you need a full-flavored chicken stock recipe, here’s mine. It is based on the recipe starting on page 91 of James Peterson’s Sauces. For what it’s worth, the book is a classic. Following his procedure exactly will obtain superior results.
I prefer the pressure cooker for stock making as a matter of convenience. Cooking Issues has (characteristically) great discussion of using a pressure cooker for stock. However, the site is down for de-hacking (my guess). If you’re interested, I’d search their site in a few months.
If you don’t have one, a slow cooker or a pot on a stove will work just fine. Just cook the ingredients at a very slow rate (a few bubbles every few seconds) until you can twist or fold apart the chicken bones.
Ingredients
You don’t have to have 6 kg of chicken. Scale the recipe up or down as needed.
By chicken I mean “spare parts” from here. Parts suitable for stock like backs and necks can also be purchased at the supermarket. But at that point I’d suggest buying pre-made stock and then fortifying it at home. Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything provides one way to go about this.
- 6 kg chicken
- 9 kg water
- 500 g chopped onion
- 250 g chopped carrot
- 125 g chopped celery
- Dash dried thyme
- Several parsley stems
- Pinch dried tarragon
- 2 bay leaves
Procedure
- If you have a whole chicken carcass, cut it into a few pieces. Place the pieces in a single layer in a metal roasting pan in an oven at 425° F. Cook until the chicken is well-browned.
- While chicken roasts, add some olive oil to the pressure cooker and brown the vegetables.
- When the chicken is done roasting, add it, liquid from deglazing the roasting pan, and the herbs to the browned vegetables. Add the water.
- Bring the water almost to the boil, close the pressure cooker, and cook at 15 psi for an hour. Release pressure using the natural release method.
- Strain the stock into a storage container, cool, and store in the refrigerator.
