Chicken Stock - Page 318

This is the final if the quintuple fun we had last Sunday.  As stated before, both Ox and I are experienced stock makers, so chicken feet were nothing new to us.  Some of the methods used were, but they seemed to be variations on a theme rather than some new stock making miracle method.  We made a slight modification to the ingredients, because we had a need for thighs, breasts and wings for some future plans, we bought two whole chickens from H and L Market and broke them down ourselves, using everything from both chickens except the thighs and breasts.  As you can see from the picture, I slightly overestimated the size of the stockpot, but we eventually got everything fitted in.

We also did a pre-boil and rinse of the feet, just because I've seen what my sister's chicken's feet and what they walk through, so I don't trust anyone else to clean them!  other than that we followed the recipe to a tee, up until cooldown.  Again we used a wort chiller to cool the stock and then refrigerated it overnight.

My method for storage of stock is to ladel 2 cups into a quart ziploc bag and lay it flat on a quarter sheet pan in the freezer.  This makes what I call "index cards" of pre-measured stock.  It takes a while, but as you can see from the picture, it's easy to store and use.  I also measure out a few 1/2 cup "mini" packs.  If you have a beverage fridge with freezer, you can freeze one bag at a time in the freezer, which is usually directly over the cooling coils.  This means you can freeze a bag in less than 40 minutes!  Even though you're only doing one at a time, it's still faster than sheet pans in a regular freezer.

Advice: If you are going to make large amounts of stock, we love a turkey fryer with a basket and a wort chiller.  A turkey fryer gets this hot mess out of the kitchen and onto the driveway.  A wort chiller is a coil of copper tubing with tubes at either end that you can connect to a garden hose.  It's used to cool home brew beer down before adding yeast, but is awesome for stock.  Submerge it right after turning the heat off (disinfects it), connect to hose and slowly turn the water on.  200F to 70F in 5 minutes (depending on water supply temp).  I don't know why every professional kitchen doesn't do this.