All Things Chill

I made chicken stock a few days ago while making a quick (ok not so quick lol) salad for dinner. I pretty much used the recipe I’ve posted about before, but this time I pulled two frozen chicken carcasses (one from last week and the other one from this meal) that I saved in gallon-sized ziptop bags. Oh, I also didn’t add garlic (I roasted my last head for that night’s salad dressing).

What I didn’t explain in the previous recipe post is how to store the stock. I followed the two-stage cooling method (you can find an example here) for safety & sanitation’s sake. Once the stock is cooled (and incidentally the layer of the fat is removed from the top), just chill them in regular ol’ ice cube trays and let them freeze overnight. Just pop the cubes out the next morning, then bag ‘em and tag ‘em (just like the picture above). Ugly handwriting / chicken drawing optional. LOL.

The frozen stock will keep for about 6 months! Use them to finish your pan sauces, deepen the flavor in soups, enrich gravies - you name it! Oh, when you want to use the flavored cubes of deliciousness… follow Alton Brown’s advice:

Whatever you do, I don’t care if you’re using fresh stock or frozen stock, you want to bring all stocks to a boil for two full minutes before using. Just in case any nasty bugs moved into the neighborhood.

I’d hate to have bugs in MY neighborhood. And by neighborhood, I mean your intestines. You’re just asking for a weekend in the “think tank.” And by think tank I mean… oh nevermind. LOL.

MMMMM stock!

~Spec

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 12:37 am and is filed under Cooking Culture, Cuisine, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.