Stock Sunday

We recently took the plunge and signed up for the "chicken freezer special" through our CSA farm.  Because of this we now are the proud owners of 5 cut up chickens (which comes out to be 25 pounds) that are sitting pretty in the freezer waiting to be used.  The farm divided the chickens up into bags of wings, legs, breasts, thighs and carcasses and you could have even gotten the feet as well which we politely declined.  (Look, I'm an adventurous eater but I'm drawing the line in the sand when it comes to chicken feet considering just thinking about them I'm starting to feel a gag reflex coming on).  So I'm sure you're probably asking yourself right now "what the hell are they going to do with all that chicken in that house?" but the way it was divided up makes it very easy and approachable to cook with and who doesn't love a good deal on loca-vore chicken?  So right now our freezer is stocked pretty full and the first project that I wanted to tackle upon picking up our chickens was to make a big stash of homemade chicken stock to have for the season.  The quality of store bought stocks have greatly improved over the years and I'm a huge fan of how they sell it in the paper cartons now so it's easy to store whenever you just need a little bit but nothing beats homemade chicken stock.  My life has been insanely busy lately and when I saw that I had a free day on Sunday, I jumped at the chance to stay home all day and just cook and clean and attempt to get caught up on all of those projects that keep piling up.  You do need a good few hours at home to make homemade stock but was mainly a hands-off, self-maintaining project that has now produced around 10 quarts of chicken stock for the season.  My inspiration for the stock came from this article on chicken stock from the September 2011 Bon Appetit but is very easy to adapt to whatever ingredients you have at home.  Here is the rundown:

In a large roasting pan, I threw in all of my chicken carcasses and tossed them in some vegetable oil and a few generous grinds of freshly cracked pepper (I decided to leave out the salt so I can control my sodium levels when I'm actually using the stock to cook).  In a 375 degree oven, they roasted for about 45 minutes until they developed a nice brown crust to them.  I know not everyone has chicken carcasses lying around their kitchens so you can also use chicken wings, a left over roast chicken that you had the night before or even buy a cheap whole chicken that you can cut up. 

Once these were finished cooking, they went into a large 12-quart stock pot (I used one of those multi-pots that have a built in strainer and for the first time ever I was really sold on the use of these pots because usually I find them to be overly cumbersome when cooking pasta but this made clean-up a complete breeze) and then filled it 3 quarters of the way up with water and let it start to cook on a light simmer.  Meanwhile in the roasting pans, I tossed in cut up carrots, celery and onions and let them roast for about 30 minutes until they became soft and started to caramelize.  These then went into the pot as well and I adjusted my water levels so I was at a comfortable level without having to worry about over-flow issues.  I let it cook at the light simmer level for 3 to 4 hours while I was doing other things until it developed that nice rich brown color that you always see in cookbooks.  

Then I strained all of the chicken and veggies out and let the pot cool until it came to room temperature.  This is when I rigged up my system in the kitchen for filling the bags with stock that were going to go into the freezer (I find freezer bags more useful then plastic quart containers because they are much easier to store).  First I strained small amounts of stock into a large measuring cup to get out any leftover solids that were in the pot.  From there it got transferred into a fat separator in order to skim off some of the fat that developed while cooking and then from there it was transferred into quart sized freezer bags that then went into the fridge to cool completely for a day and then made their decent into the freezer Monday night.  

I was able to deposit 10 bags of chicken stock into the freezer that will be used into the fall for soups and such and you have no idea how personally satisfying and fulfilling it is to see all of those bags of stock every time you open the freezer door.  Now we get to move on to the rest of the chicken.  

A few random things: 
-We signed up for the fall share through our CSA.  It goes for 5 weeks and will take us through November until the first week of December.  I'm hoping for lot of squash and Brussel sprouts.  We still have 4 weeks remaining with the regular share and if we had to take a hiatus from eggplant for awhile in this house I wouldn't be overly heartbroken...it just keeps coming!!!!
- I made the zucchini squash ribbons again that I talked about in an earlier post and this time remembered to shoot a picture, Here is the at home version.