Making Chicken Stock (note - not from ours!!!)

Continuing our theme of not featuring any recipes, today I'm showing how to use left over chicken from Sunday's roast to make a tasty stock. (In case you are wondering - no not from ours!! Anyway we don't have any chickens, we have hens. There is a huge difference!!)

The ingredients - according to the cook book I'm using - are, in addition to the chicken carcass, including all the skin, bones and bits of gunk; a roughly chopped onion; a couple of carrots and celery sticks, all chunked up; some peppercorns, garlic cloves and herbs.

Here they are all nicely laid on the chopping board.

Neatly laid out - it's obviously early on in the job

The herbs are supposed to be tied together as a bouquet garni - as old Mickey Roux would call it. Here's my attempt - pretty stylish, no? The book suggests, parsley, bay and thyme. I've got rosemary, sage and thyme, so close enough.

A quite dreadful picture of some herbs.

Then you are supposed to cram all the bits in a sauce pan just big enough to take all the ingredients covered in water. This took two attempts - as with ingredients, I never seem to be able to judge the size of pot, pan or dish needed first time, thereby doubling the amount of washing up required - but the assembled dish now looks like this:

Now I bring it up to a simmer and leave it for a couple of hours, keeping an eye on it and skimming off any gunk that floats to the surface. Lord knows how much gas that's going to use - I wonder whether this is as cost effective as it's made out to be!!

Then when its done, pour it out the pan through a sieve, into a bowl and leave to cool.

I know, I know - you've seen more appetizing dish-water

Finally, after a bit more skimming - honestly no need to go mad on this bit - pour into a plastic pot, put in the freezer and forget all about it (ha! kidding!!). All the cheffy chefs make and keep stock in the kitchen, and chuck it in just about everything, soup, stews, gravies, anything that needs a 'liquor' as I think they call it. You can make stock from fish, beef and lamb, I guess any joint that you end up with bones and stuff left over, but I've only attempted chicken so far. I can report it's great as a base for a gravy to pep up bangers'n'mash (all right I nicked the idea from Nigel Slater, but he probably nicked it from somewhere else, anyway).

I'd recommend having a go and keeping some to hand to chuck in your next culinary masterpiece. Sure beats wasting a couple of glasses of perfectly good alcohol.