Every good cookbook (and every good cook) will tell you of the virtues of making your own stock (AKA broth). Whether or not there is a difference between stock and broth, I don’t know. Let’s say that stock is what people in restaurants make and broth is what people at home make. All stocks start with bones of some kind. Most cooks—home and restaurant—add vegetables, the occasional clove of garlic, peppercorns (for no reason I can fathom), an odd sprig of parsley and so on. In my first restaurant job, I worked with a chef who made his with nothing but bones and water. And, as a rule, what Vinnie did, you did. To say he was temperamental is an understatement. To say he once almost electrocuted himself by chopping a table top radio to pieces with a cleaver is a fact. I doubt he would have felt much, given the amount of cream sherry he had ingested in the hours prior to the hacking incident, but that’s another story. Anyway, Vinnie, with his cleaver, temperament and all, was on to something. Why season a stock if you don’t know what you are going to end up doing with it?
75% of the stock I make goes into soup, and I start most soups with a mix of carrot, celery, and onion, so I would be pretty safe adding a little of each of the three to the stock, right? Not necessarily. I think vegetables lose a lot of flavor during the extended period I cook stocks, so why bother? There are, as always, exceptions. My friend Daisy’s version of chicken soup starts with a broth made with, among other things, red bell pepper and saffron. The broth is strained before finishing the soup with chicken, egg noodles, a new set of vegetables and so on. Maybe that is the difference between stock and broth: Stock is a more or less neutral (restaurant) preparation designed to go into all kinds of soups, sauces, etc., while broth is made (at home) with a specific end in mind. In any event and semantics aside, what is really important is to extract as much flavor as possible from the bones through long, slow cooking. With that kind of solid base, you’re off to a good start.
Chicken stock is the most practical stock for home cooks to make. It is also the most versatile. All you need, if you subscribe to my less is more doctrine, is chicken bones and water. If you roast a chicken and find yourself with a bunch of lovely picked over roasted chicken bones and a bag of giblets, here’s what to do: Put all the bones in a 4-quart heavy pot, then open the bag of giblets and add the neck and giblets, but not the livers (if there are any), as they will turn the stock nasty. Either toss the livers or use them for something else. (Got a cat?) Pour in enough water to cover all the bones by about 2 inches. A little more or less won’t throw things out of whack. Turn the heat up to high and bring it to a rolling boil. Wait a minute or two, so pretty much all the foam that is going to form will form. Skim off and get rid of the foam. Lower the heat so a few bubbles at a time are rising to the top. Now, keep it that way for a long time- at least 3 hours or up to 4. I go even longer with bones that aren’t roasted first, but cooked bones have a little head start so don’t need as long. Make sure there is enough water to keep the bones covered throughout. The stock is done when just a little nudge from a spoon breaks the bones apart. That long slow cooking not only adds flavor, but body, by leaching out the gelatin from the bones. (See a spoon stand up in the chilled, long-cooked stock, above.) Once you’re on Stock Highway, you can take any exit you like:
Chicken Soup: With a little stock on hand, it’s time to clean out the vegetable draw.The simplest method is to start with any onions, leeks, mushrooms, carrots or celery you have on hand. Dice them and cook them in a large saucepan in a little butter/oil over medium heat. While they’re softening a bit, take hard/root vegetables like potatoes, winter squash, celery root, etc, peel them and cut them into small dice. Pour in as much stock as you like and bring the stock to a boil. Add the diced vegetables and let them go while cutting up softer vegetables like zucchini, yellow squash or sturdy greens like escarole or kale. Add those to the broth along with frozen peas, if you have them on hand, and let the whole thing cook 5 minutes or so. Add shredded cooked chicken meat and tender greens like spinach. Season as you like. If you’re in the mood for something starchy–like noodles, barley or couscous–cook it separately, drain it and stir it into the finished soup.
One Pan Meals Any restaurant line cook who has worked the saute station knows the drill: “Protein” (chicken breasts/salmon fillets/pork cutlets) go into a pan with a little oil/butter over fairly high heat to brown and cook through. Once removed, any number of vegetable accompaniments, let’s say leek and mushroom, are added. They in turn are browned. Finished with a little wine maybe, a little seasoning and a nice addition of chicken stock and bring to a screaming boil. The liquid dissolves all the lovely brown bits that stuck to the pan and incorporate them into the sauce. Tuck the protein back in and let the whole thing go until the pan liquid has boiled enough to reduce to a thinnish syrup. Spoon the sauced vegetables onto a plate and top with the finished meat/fish. Like the chicken soup above, this lends itself to a hundred variations.
Dill Tea: Dill isn’t high on my list of favorite herbs, but here is one dill thing I am wild about: Heat some chicken broth to a simmer. Take a few sprigs of fresh dill and crush them lightly in your hand. Toss them into the stock and let it stand about 5 minutes. Strain into a mug and sip away.
Any recipe that calls for chicken broth (like escarole and beans) will be immeasurably better when made with homemade, gelatinous chicken broth than with store-bought chicken broth, no matter how good that broth might be.
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