Making your own chicken stock is a cinch and is so much better than anything you can buy in the store that there’s no contest. I make 3 or 4 quarts at a time and freeze it in 2- or 4-cup-size containers. You can use it in soups or in place of water when cooking rice or vegetables…it’s delicious. Our local butcher shop sells chicken bones with some meat still on them for way cheap – 99 cents Canadian for about 4 pounds.
Take 3-4 pounds of chicken parts and/or bones
1 cup chopped onion (don’t even bother to peel it)
1 cup chopped carrot
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 sprig of fresh thyme or a pinch of dried thyme
1/2 bay leaf
A few sprigs of fresh parsley
A teaspoon or more of salt
Four quarts of water
Put everything together in a stockpot, bring almost to a boil and then simmer, partially covered for at least 2 hours. Strain, refrigerate for a day, skim off any fat, then put in containers and freeze.
Another wonderful and simple stock is shrimp stock: if you buy shrimp with their shells on, don’t throw the shells away…use them for this stock:
4 cups of shrimp shells (from about 2 pounds of shrimp)
1 tsp salt
4.5 cups of water
Combine everything in a saucepan, bring to a boil, then turn heat to low and cover. Cook for 15 minutes, cool, and strain. Keep in fridge for up to 2 days or freeze. This is good as the basis for any fish soup, shrimp soup, or garlic soup.
Also note that, in the US at least, almost all shrimp that you buy in the supermarket were sold to the market frozen and then thawed for sale, so you’re best off buying frozen shrimp and thawing them yourself at home.
In the past, I believe, salt curing meat use to be done with more than just side and belly pork. Prior to and including the civil war salt pork was given out as a ration and it often the whole butchered pig that was salted not just the fatty sections. I often wonder what many of the older recipes tasted like with the older ingredients.
