Chicken Stock

This is my amazing chicken stock.  I am serious, it is the best.  My father actually taught me how to make this, and he is one of the reasons for my cooking.  I use this for all my soups as a basis.  The key ingredient to a good chicken stock and soup is parsnip.  If you have not used parsnip in your stock to date you are missing out.  Also another key is that you sauté your vegetables in olive oil first for a few minutes to get the vegetable flavors.  If you are adding your vegetables to boiling water your loose the taste of those vegetables in a stock.

When you make chicken stock use a whole chicken, it is a money saver.  You can remove the chicken breasts from the chicken, and save for another dinner, and then cut up the rest of the chicken and put it into the pot.  If you are new to cutting a whole chicken don?t worry you are just making chicken stock, it doesn?t matter how you cut it, so just go for it and practice. Also, from one whole chicken you get two chicken breasts for another dinner, chicken stock, and cooked chicken for a chicken salad.  That is much cheaper than buying all those pieces separate.

This chicken stock can be frozen or just saved in containers in the refrigerator.  Another great idea is to put chicken stock in your ice cub trays.  So if the recipe calls for a little chicken stock you can just take a few cubes from the ice cube tray and you don?t have to use a huge container.

Also using this recipe you can make an excellent soups and even my excellent chicken soup, that recipe is coming soon.

It is very easy and your will love it.

1 whole chicken

2 carrots

1 small celery root

2 stalks of celery

1 parsnip

2 yellow onions

1 whole garlic

1 tsp of paprika

7 whole allspice

7 whole black pepper

4 bay leaves

½ bottle of dry white wine

6 cups water

1 tsp kosher salt

- Cut all the vegetables into small cubes (carrots, celery root, celery, parsnip, and onions)

- Clean the garlic and smash each clove or you can chop it to your liking

- Pour some olive oil into your pot and let it warm a little.  Then put all your vegetables and garlic into the pot and sauté for about 5 minutes.

- Take the allspice and black pepper and crush in a mortar and pour into your pot

- Then take the rest of the spices (paprika, bay leave, and salt) and pour into the pot

- Sauté for about 5 more minutes

- Pour half a bottle of dry white wine into the pot

 - Let it cook for 5 minutes

- Pour in the water

- Bring it to boil and taste if you want more salt for flavor. I usually add some.

- Take your whole chicken and clean it as you wish.  I save the breasts for other dinners.  Take the insides (heart, liver etc.) and put into pot.  Cut the wings off and cut them into two pieces and put into the pot.  Cut the legs off and cut into two pieces and put into pot.  Then take the rest of the whole chicken body and put into the pot.  If you do not want to cut the chicken up and want to use the whole chicken for the soup you would cut the chicken in half and put both halves into the pot.  Let the chicken simmer for 45 minutes.

- After simmering for 45 minutes take the chicken out and let cool. You can make chicken salad out of this chicken.

- Take away any remaining chicken fat that has risen to the top of the soup.

- Using a potato masher, crush the vegetables.  Then using a colander drain the stock into another bowl and remove all the vegetables.  I usually through out these vegetables.

- You can freeze this and save the stock in containers, ice cube trays or make soup right away.

- Makes about 8 cups of stock.

Enjoy!