I’ve been writing about my slow cooker a bit recently, but I haven’t covered the main reason I bought it - which is to make stock. The topic is covered in The New English Kitchen by Rose Prince but she says that slow cookers aren’t really worth it for chicken stock, because you don’t need to cook chicken stock for so long. I think she is wrong. The best stock I ever made from a roast chicken (pre slow cooker anyway) was using our friend Ian’s method: bung the stockpot in a very low oven overnight. It worked brilliantly apart from the enormous expense and distressing waste of heating a fairly large oven to cook a moderate casserole of stock (not to mention the racket our oven makes when it’s on - it’s the door cooling fans, I could hear them roaring like a cyclone all night). Hence my bright idea of using a slow cooker.
It has worked even better than I could have imagined - such a neat and easy way of turning a leftover carcass that you would normally throw out into 3 pints of useful stock that will genuinely make your risottos and soups taste so much better. (And if you can’t even face chopping a carrot I have a very lazy version for the truly idle, at the bottom.) To come clean, I have to admit that for the truly easy life you need not just a slow cooker, but a freezer, a microwave, and 6 tupperware tubs that take a ½ pint each. But that isn’t asking too much of most kitchens, is it? So here we go:
Take your leftover roast chicken, and pick it over, separating the meat into one pile and the rest into another. I mean everything - bones, skin, everything you really don’t think you could face putting in a sandwich. Steal the bones off your diners’ plates too. Put the meat in the fridge (don’t forget to eat it up) and the rest of the stuff in the slow cooker. To the bones etc add a couple of carrots, washed and chopped; an onion, skinned and chopped; two bay leaves; 6 or so peppercorns; a good teaspoon of celery seed or a chopped stick of celery (this is ideal but not critical); 3 pints (or 1.5 litres if you are that way inclined) of water. Note: NO salt. Close the cooker, and set to cook for about 6 hours. Go to work, or leave over night, or do something else interesting while it brews.
When you come back to your cooked stock, take a big jug or bowl or saucepan, and sit a sieve in it. On the work top, also have ready an empty carrier, sides rolled down to it sits up like a bowl and lined in the bottom with paper towel or a layer of newspaper (this stops your bin going soggy). Ladle the stock out of the cooker and through the sieve into the jug, letting the sieve catch all the veg and bones. Periodically empty out the sieve into the lined carrier. When you have tipped all the stock through the sieve and got all the bones and mess in the carrier, tie it up the bag and bin it.
Divide the stock between your 6 tupperware tubs, label, cool, and freeze. When you need stock, microwave a tub (on high, don’t waste time with the defrost setting) and bung in whatever you are cooking. I find ½ pint portions are handiest, as it’s easier to defrost two tubs for soup than to only have a one pint tub in the freezer when I need a small amount for gravy.
This same approach works for other leftover bits of bird like pheasant or partridge, and makes fantastic game soup - especially if you shove a glass of wine in the stock pot. Use proportionally less water - if you are using one pheasant carcass you only need a pint or so - plus the wine. In this case also add other goodies like bacon and herbs - refer to the recipe for grouse soup in the River Cottage Meat book if you want (slightly more) exact instructions.
Now, for the really lazy version. Imagine you have a chicken carcass, but tragically you haven’t a carrot in the house. Or an onion. And it is late on Sunday night and not a shop open, and you know if you put off making your stock it just won’t happen, not until the carcass has had to be binned anyway. Here’s the emergency stock plan: follow the method above exactly - but instead of adding the carrot, onion and celery you add about 3 teaspoons of Marigold vegetable stock powder. Continue exactly as above, and you will get a perfectly good chicken stock. It won’t be as good as doing it with real veg, but it will be a hell of a lot nicer than even the poshest bottled chicken stock concentrate, and a lot more like chicken stock then plain Marigold powder. Which, for plain risottos or even a leek and potato soup, can be the difference between a perfectly nice supper and a truly great supper.
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