Chicken Stock

INGREDIENTS:

Chicken carcass (roasted)

1 carrot

1 onion

2 celery sticks

1 bulb garlic

A handful of fresh herbs, such as rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, sage

Black pepper

4 litres water

METHOD

Make sure you have picked off any excess meat from the chicken and save for another dish. Pull away the leg and wing bones, then using scissors, chop the carcass into pieces small enough to fit easily in your saucepan.

Wash the vegetables but don’t peel them. Cut off the dirty end of the root of the onion, but leave the skin on. Chop them roughly into large pieces and throw into the pan. Chop the bulb of garlic in half. Throw in any hardy herbs you have growing or in the fridge and a handful of whole black peppercorns.

Cover with water. 4 litres is approximately right but this will depend on the size of your pan.

The less water there is the more likely it is to boil dry. Cover with a lid.

Place on the hob and slowly bring to the boil, then turn the heat down. If you are cooking it on the hob, cook at a slow simmer for a further 3 hours, checking at intervals to make sure there is enough water in there. If you want to leave it, place the whole pan in the oven at 140°C and leave for up to 5 hours (125°C if you want to leave it all night).

When it is ready, strain off the stock from the bones into another saucepan and leave to drain for 5 minutes. Pick out the vegetables you might want to add to a soup and discard the bones.

Boil the stock at a rolling boil until it has reduced by half. You should be left with approximately 1.5 litres.

Cool thoroughly overnight, then skim off the hard fat from the top. Heat gently to pour into freezable containers.

Include the skin in the stock as it contains lots of flavour. Any fat that appears in the stock can be skimmed off the top when it is cold. If your sieve has large holes, you might want to put a new/clean j-cloth over it to catch any smaller bits of bone.