A method for chicken broth
Four-hour simmering to while away the long weekend
Hey, hi, hello!
A long weekend to celebrate Good Friday and Easter for Christians/Catholics, a long weekend to wind down and recharge for everyone else. I know it’s not very fitting to be writing about chicken broth on Good Friday, a day of fast and abstinence (I’m Catholic), BUT the best part about chicken broth is that you don’t really have to taste/check for seasoning because you can salt it to taste anytime, after the initial seasoning.
I am huge on broth. HUGE. Like, I love broth so much I worry I might turn into Gwyneth and be having just bone broth for lunch when I’m 50. Not for dietary reasons but because of pure addiction. (I have quite an extremist personality, which we will not talk about today.) If i stopped baking for work, I would be a broth maker. When I go out for bak kut teh or hotpot, I ask for refills of soup at least six times. It’s the only way to get your money’s worth. Once, I went to Hai Di Lao for a birthday celebration and got the lady to give me some takeaway containers for soup (she assured me that I’m not the only person who takes away the entire pot of soup). I promptly dropped one of the containers a couple of days on the floor and it cracked, spilling soup everywhere, draining me of all happiness.
Soup, broth, stock. Potato potato, tomato tomato. Ish.
Broth, made with a ton of time and concern, is other-worldly. The transformation of just water and some animal bones and fat, sometimes with meat attached, and vegetables/aromatics/wine is... (I am at a loss for words.) I usually make broth or stock when I have some time, or when it’s part of a dish I’m cooking for a gathering/festive meal. I’ve made some pretty good stocks - Chi Spacca’s chicken with red wine, Gjelina’s fish stock (hella divine but requires a ton of ingredients which are annoying to get and expensive).
Chicken broth, on the other hand: Easy ingredients. Probably some that you already have on hand. Always accessible. Always achievable. Never lets you down. Like a favourite child (that accepts your projection of unfulfilled dreams and ends up with lifelong trauma). I JEST!!
Broth is not rocket science. It just requires patience and time. And looking at a whole chicken, head and feet intact. Ok, unless your butcher hands you a headless chicken. Which makes the whole experience less fun.
I’ve been wanting to find a really solid way of making chicken broth for a long time so I find opportunities to test methods and recipes. I first made this for a friend down with stomach flu a couple of weeks back. It yielded such a delicious result that, to be honest, I think I’m pretty much done testing.
Ever since then, my life has changed. For some inexplicable reason, I try to look for four-hour pockets of time in my week these days.
Ok, enough rambling.
Get yourself a whole chicken. A regular sized chicken. Nothing too big. Big birds scare me. They get me thinking they’re on steroids and a bunch of antibiotics or some shit like that. Kampung chickens would probably work but I don’t know if you would need two considering they are smaller in general and have less fat? (Don’t quote me.)
You also want a carrot, a medium onion, and a stick of celery, although you could add anything you like. I had some flat leaf parsley lying around and threw that in (including stems) which added a nice flavour. You don’t want to go too crazy because if you are intending this broth for another purpose, you can always add those aromatics later on. Keep in mind that adding more of any of the aromatics will result in a broth with more pronounced carrot/onion/celery flavour. I like my broth clean tasting, chicken-forward, and versatile as a base.
If your chicken has giblets, remove them and toss.
Use a sharp knife to remove the breasts: cut along the breast bone on both sides and, letting your knife do the work, run your blade as close as possible to the meat till the breast meat comes clean. If not, pull it away with your hands. It should come away in one piece. If it doesn’t, don’t fret. You can leave it be or trim the rest of it off. Leave the chicken skin intact with the carcass of the chicken so you can render more schmaltz from the skin into your broth - unless you would like your chicken breasts with skin, for some reason I cannot fathom. I reserve the breast meat for cooking.
Make a slit in both legs and thighs so aaaall the flavour can be extracted.
Grab a stockpot large enough to fit your chicken snugly, and add about 4L of water. If this amount of water does not cover your chicken, cut the legs off and/or the wings, then place them in the pot. Do not cut through the breastbone or backbone!
It should look like so:
it is okay if the carcass floats, like, 2-3mm above the water Bring to a boil. Stir once to let the scum rise to the surface and skim, trying not to remove the schmaltz. The best way to do this is to have a bowl or cup filled with some water and a small ladle or deep-set spoon so that you can skim, dip to rinse, and repeat.
Add your vegetables and about a teaspoon of salt. If you are estimating, go easy on the salt as the liquid reduces while simmering. You can add more later on but you cannot remove salt!
Lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and check back 4 hours / 240 minutes / 14400 seconds later. You could, in a pinch, simmer it for 3 hours if you are time-starved. It will still be good - better than any store-bought stock, but the extra hour really does deliver. I like salting aaalmost to taste at this point.
Let cool, strain, and you will have a glorious bowl of liquid gold.
For the love of God, DO NOT THROW those wondrous vegetables away! By now, your onions and celery would have turned meltingly soft, your carrots perfectly stewed all the way through. A great snack. I hate throwing food away.
The meat, on the other hand. The first time I made it, the meat looked like it could be possibly delicious and tender but was chalky and kinda mushy. Not pleasant. Quite inedible even though I tried salvaging it. The second time, however, it was totally edible and delicious. I am not sure if it was because I had the broth going at a more rapid simmer, or because if there was a difference in the quality of chicken. You know how boiling tightens/toughens meat? It wasn’t boiling, but maybe at a more rapid simmer (which tightens the meat enough to pull through the long cooking etc etc. This could be absolute horseshit my mind puts together; if you have inputs please chime in!). The second time round I got the chicken at my usual trusted butcher at the wet market instead of the supermarket.
If you taste your meat and it is still good, save it, shred it (or not) and use in soups, porridges, etc.
The second time I made this, I started at 6:30pm and was done at 10:30pm. While working on something till midnight, I got the hunger pangs and was pleased to know that I could have some warm savoury broth, a wee bit of chicken, and lovely onions and carrots for supper. I imagine, if you had kids, it would be lovely to wind down with this and quiet time after putting your kids to bed. I don’t know why I thought about that but I did. But if you are a mum you’d probably be too tired. I don’t know.
I had planned to share how I used this broth but it seems like there are A LOT of words in my mind. So, another short post then.
Thanks for reading, if you did, till the end!
Bisous!
M.