Phew, what a weekend. My wife and I hosted a Meat Festival for some friends we hadn’t seen in years and years, plus some new friends. The pie making started this last Friday evening and continued in to Saturday. Thus, my posting had lagged a bit. I was able to knock out a load of chicken stock in my new 16 qt pot though. And this is it.

First off I want to take a moment and mention that I am quite impressed with Farberware’s inexpensive 16 qt. stock pot. It was only 69 bucks, but has a thick aluminum disc on the bottom. Plus it looks all shiny and pretty. I really wanted one of those solid copper Mauviel rigs, but can’t see spending 450 dollars on a stock pot, yet.

I almost didn’t post the stock making. Chicken stock, for the most part, is pretty straight forward and nothing special. Except when I saw the result, Chicken Jello, I just had to put it up. This stock was going to be a basic one, nothing out of the ordinary. Chicken backs, wings and other bits mixed with a pound of roughly cut carrots, a few stalks of celery, bouquet garni (mostly fresh Thyme) and two onions. This and 15 quarts of water melded with a few hours of good simmering and you have your beast.
This is what you see for two hours, a pot (with the lid off), simmering. Boring.

I spent a lot of time skimming, skim skim skim skim. I need to hone my skimming skills, I feel I lost too much liquid love. Oh, skim.

Along with the Skim Fu, I need to get myself a Chinois. A nice large sieve to separate the juice from the particles. Anyway, here we see the final product before I popped it into the refridgerator for its night long congeal.
The smell was that of a really nice thick homey chickenny soup. The taste was a tad bland, mostly because I added NO salt. I’ll add that to the preparing food, more control eh.

I had a great time making the stock. The prep time really didn’t exist and when I was done all I had to do was put it in the fridge over night. The next morning it was easy to peel out the layer of chicky fat, a lot easier than skimming.
Next time I’ll be adding some other goodies and roasting the meat to brown up the stock a bit.
p.s. what prompted this was having to pay upwards of 3.30 a quart for Natural/Organic stock at the grocery store. I use a lot in cooking and it was making me mad. So I did it myself. Feh.