Larder: Stock

Short of eating your own arms, you can’t get much thriftier than making a nice stock. The idea is that you keep a pot of water simmering away on the stove, and drop in chicken carcasses, peelings, rind, vegetables and any unwanted bits and pieces you might not yet have squeezed for their full potential.

After a good deal of bubbling, you sieve the remaining broth and save it to use in sauces, stews, and soups to add depth and flavour to your cooking. Tim Hayward gave us the fantastic idea of freezing your stock as a kind of flat, meaty ice pop for later use – cheers Tim.

The only problem with this technique is that we’re not all 1940’s housewives with stoves and aprons and bags of time in which to rustle up a hearty old broth; so an instant option may be necessary.

Telma chicken soup mix
400g
£2.79 from Ocado or Tesco
Beloved of Jews everywhere, this is strictly a chicken soup mix, and we would gladly drink it from a mug, if stupid social conduct would just get out of our way. For your money, you get 400g of this satisfying broth mixture – roughly 70 servings – and as much salty, herby, spicy chickenish flavour as you’re likely to need. Great for adding flavour to your rice or noodles.

Marigold Bouillon powder
150g
£1.38 from Asda
Bouillon is a classic French soup, made with stock vegetables and meat. As well as being the base of a great vegetable Bouillon, this powder can add depth of flavour to gravy, soup or sauce, without relying on salt as heavily as other vegetable stocks.

Comments

Uncle Chris - 21st September 2009, 9:43pm

Good stock is the number one essential building block of good food. No question. This does not mean that you have to slave away for hours to make one. I rekon that a stock which should (in the olden days take three hours can be 90% as good made in 3/4 hour). I add 1/2 of a KALLO cube to help it along, it’s not too salty. For a tasty chicken stock put whatever chicken bits and bobs you have in a pan with about a litre of water. Always have a head of celery in the fridge so that you can use a stick, the same me with leek, use a handful of the dark green part which may otherwise be discarded. Keep a bay plant in the garden so you can use a leaf or two and a chopped carrot and onion completes the line-up. Bubble away for the said 45mins then pour through a sieve, pushing it through to extract as much stuff as you can. Reduce in volume by boiling rapidly and you have an essence of chickeny nedgetableness which will enhance or make a dish. It really is worth it. Always start with a whole chicken, it means you are not paying for someone to joint it and the unwanted bits will add flavour to your stock. It’s easy to joint a chicken, and what if it goes wrong? Only you will know and it will not make the slightest difference to the taste.

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