Actually very easy

Chicken stock

The beliefGood chicken stock is assumed to need hours at a rolling boil, and cloudy stock to be more nourishing.

The truthChicken stock is made at a bare simmer, not a boil. Cloudiness is not nourishment; it is fat beaten into the water by boiling.

3 hours 30 minutes

How to make it

What you need

1.5 kg chicken carcasses, wings and necks (or a whole chicken)
3 litres of cold water
1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 celery stalk or half a celeriac
2 bay leaves, 8–10 black peppercorns, a few parsley stalks

How the engine read this list (8 lines)

—	Chicken carcasses, wings and necks	no record
3000 g	Cold water	water
150 g	Onion	onion
70 g	Carrot	carrot
250 g	Celeriac	celeriac
0 g	Bay leaves	bay-leaf
—	Black peppercorns	black-pepper
—	Parsley stalks	parsley

An empty weight means that line could not be turned into grams — either the amount is open ("to taste") or the ingredient has no record here. Neither enters the sum as zero; they do not enter it at all.

Put the chicken in the pan, cover with the cold water and bring it up over a medium flame to just below the boil.
Skim off the grey foam that rises. Turn the heat down until only the odd bubble breaks the surface (90–95 °C).
Add the vegetables, roughly chopped, with the spices. Cook it for three hours with the lid ajar.
Strain through a fine sieve and throw away the bones and vegetables. If you used a whole chicken, lift it out after the first hour and take the meat off.
Divide the stock into small containers and get it into the fridge within two hours. The next day spoon off the fat that has set on top.

Why it works

The body of chicken stock comes from the collagen in bones and skin. Above 70 °C collagen breaks down over hours into gelatine; if a stock sets like jelly in the fridge, the gelatine has made it into the water. Chicken collagen breaks down faster than beef’s, so three hours at a simmer is enough for a good set. Why keep the heat low? A rolling boil breaks the fat into tiny droplets and keeps them suspended with the protein, and the stock turns cloudy. At 90–95 °C only the odd bubble breaks the surface, the fat collects on top and the coagulating proteins can be skimmed off as foam. Starting from cold water follows the same logic: as the temperature climbs slowly, the proteins set slowly and rise. The salt goes in at the end, because stock is usually reduced further inside another dish. On the safety side, chicken must reach an internal 74 °C; three hours of simmering does that many times over. The real risk is not in the cooking but in the cooling.

The rough sum

3470 grams going in

195 kcal in total

100% of the mass has figures behind it. This is the sum of what GOES IN rather than of what comes out. Wherever something evaporates, drains or ferments the two differ: a kilo of milk is 150 g of cheese.

Diets it qualifies for

Gluten-free Vegan Vegetarian Lactose-free

Storage & shelf life

How long it keeps

Fridge, 0–5 °C: 48 hours
Freezer, in portions: 3 months
Room temperature: At most 2 hours to cool

Chicken stock is nourishing, and bacteria think so too. The UK Food Standards Agency advises getting cooked food into the fridge within one to two hours and eating leftovers within 48 hours or freezing them. A big pan will not cool that fast on its own: splitting the liquid into several small containers or standing the pan in a sink of cold water speeds it up.

When to bin it A sour smell, cloudiness, or the jelly turning watery and foaming: throw it out. Boiling it again does not destroy the toxins some bacteria leave behind.

History

Where it comes from

Meat and bone stock is the foundation French cooking calls “fond”, but chicken stock turns up independently in a great many cuisines. In Jewish cooking, giving chicken soup to the sick goes back to the writings of Maimonides in the twelfth century. In Turkish cooking chicken stock is the base of wedding soup, yayla soup, pilaf and vermicelli soup; at home a whole chicken is poached, the meat taken off, and the liquid kept for pilaf and soup.

The knack

Freeze stock in ice trays: each cube is about 30 ml, the right amount for a sauce or a pan of rice.
For a darker stock, roast the bones first at 220 °C for 30 minutes.

The pantry