Ingredients: |
Ingredients: 1 baking or stewing hen - technically you can use any chicken with bones in it and a cut-up fryer is often easier to handle in the pot, but the baking or stewing hen has more flavor. The only exception to this rule is for white chicken chili, I typically would just use boneless chicken breasts for this, because it is faster and flavor is added in other ways.
Salt and pepper
Herbs (technically optional, a necessity for stock)
Vegetables (technically optional, a necessity for stock)
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Directions: |
Directions:1) Put chicken in a large pot, and add 4 quarts of water. Add about 2 tsp of salt and about 3-4 grinds of black pepper.
2) My Aunt Dean who lived to be 90 and was well known in the family as the best dressing maker, would have stopped here, and boiled the chicken, but when I make dressing or other chicken dishes, I continue as if I was making stock.
3) Add a small onion roughly chopped, 2 stalks of celery, leaves attached, cut in half, about 1 cup of roughly chopped carrots, a bay leaf and some thyme and parsley for dumplings and other neutral recipes; sage leaves and a stalk of rosemary as well, for dressing. You can make a formal bouquet garni by tying the herbs with some poultry string or wrap them in a little square of cheesecloth and tie closed. Alternatively, just dump the herbs in the pot and strain the broth through a sieve. This method is helpful in capturing all the chicken if it begins to fall off the bone.
4) Cook partially covered on lowest heat for at least 2 hours, skimming off the foam and adding water to keep covered. Turn the heat as low as you can and still see small groups of bubbles rising to the top, a bare simmer. When the chicken has fallen off the bone, strain the broth into another pot, remove the chicken, skin it, remove any tendons or unmelted fat and chop the meat. Press hard on the meat and vegetables in the strainer to get all the liquid and flavor out of the meat. Reserve the meat in the refrigerator for your recipe. The broth can go into the refrigerator to allow the fat to rise to the top. You can certainly remove some or even most of the fat from the broth, remembering that dressing particularly, needs the fat. I usually remove 1/3 the fat when making broth for dressing. This amount of skimming does not seem to overly reduce the flavor or make the dressing too dry.
Stock vs broth: the liquid from the recipe above can be used as stock or broth. For soups refrigerate the liquid and remove all the hardened fat that rises to the top. For longer term storage pour the liquid broth into ice cube trays that have been Pam-sprayed and freeze. When frozen, pop the broth cubes out of the trays and store in a zip-lock freezer bag for up to 3 months. |
This recipe for Chicken, Boiled for Meat and Stock or Broth is from