Listening to: The Bees Made Honey in The Lion’s Skull- Earth
Whole turkey or chicken make for a few great meals and then gives the gift of bones for stock. Get in the habit of saving bones from your bird meals, including rotisserie chickens, but maybe not fried. It’s okay if there’s some meat or connective parts on the bone, it makes for a more flavorful stock.
Make a whole bunch to pressure can for shelf stable goodness or freeze if you don’t have access to a pressure canner.
Turkey or Chicken Stock- Yields 7 qts
- 3-5 ziplock bags of bones you’ve saved up in the freezer
- 1-2 ziplock bags of vegetable scraps you’ve saved in the freezer (onion peels, carrot peels and butts, celery butts, non-cruciferous odds and ends). If you didn’t save scraps, use a few whole veggies like onions, carrots, and celery.
- Aromatic herbs of your choice: a small handfull of peppercorns, bay leaves, a bouquet of thyme or sage. Whatever you have on hand will be okay.
Special Equipment: Large stock pot, pressure canner (or lots of tupperware for freezing), chinois or other kind of strainer.
0. Have the foresight to save bones from turkey or chicken. Any meat or fatty bits on there add more flavor. Like in the Vegetable Stock recipe, save some veggies too. If you don’t have freezer space to hold your would-be compost, you can scale this down significantly.
1. Roast the bones in the oven at 400F for an hour or two. Break the smaller bones for bonus points. This is an optional step, but deepens the flavor of your stock.
2. Place the bones and veggies in the stock pot, cover with water. Set it on medium-high or high setting to get it simmering. It shouldn’t boil, get that sucker on low and slow to keep the temp just right. Simmer that stock for at least 6 hours, some people go for as long as 48 hours. I usually find a happy medium at 12-16 hours for my stock.
3. Strain the stock into heat-resistant containers. Discard the veggies and herbs into your compost pile, and bones in trash. Skim some of the fat off the top of the stock. Save that shit, that’s shmaltz! Use instead of butter or lard in other recipes. If you wanted to get all of it off, refrigerate the stock for a few hours or overnight. The fat comes right off. The broth should be gelatinous and wiggly when it’s chilled, that means you did it right. All of that collagen is what the hipsters pay up the ass for in their expensive little bottles of “bone broth”.
At this stage you can freeze the broth into pint containers or in ice cube trays for a tablespoon at a time. It keeps in the fridge for about a week, any longer and it gets fizzy in my experience. Continue on if you want to learn to can your magical fluids.
4. Prepare the pressure canner according to manufacturer instructions. Bring the fat-skimmed stock to a boil. Ladle the stock into the clean jars , leaving 1 in of headspace. Give them a lil rim job with a towel and place the two piece lid. One full canner load is usually 7 quarts or 10 pints, use whichever jars will work better for your needs. Pressure can for 20 minutes for pints, or 25 minutes if using quarts. The clock starts when you hit the psi needed for your elevation, 0-1000 ft is 11 psi. Let the canner depressurize on its own and remove the jars. Listen to those beautiful lids ping, it makes your bits tingly.
Adapted from a test and USDA approved recipe. Normally when you can vegetables, peels are removed to prevent bacteria from growing, but since these peels are strained out, they are safe to use.
Well it’s been a long goddamn time since I’ve posted anything, my b. It’s a snowy day here in WA, so enjoy and make Turkey Soup or something with this recipe.