Sculpin

I’m experiencing a relapse of that killer cold. Grr. This calls for some homemade chicken soup. And as it happens, I just ran across some notes I made about making good chicken stock. This is originally from a comment I made to Holly Wade Matter’s journal, where she says, “I am healed! Or closer to being healed, thanks (several dozen times over) to the gift of broth… That is the best darned chicken broth I have ever, ever tasted.” A wonderful compliment.

I used to make terrible chicken broth/stock. I had to make a study of it. The keys are using a pressure cooker, chopping the chicken up well, and cooking the meat a little first.

I start by cooking a chopped onion in a little vegetable oil in the pressure cooker until the onion is translucent and starting to brown. While this is browning, dismantle a chicken, reserving the breast for another use, throwing out the innards (or reserving them, if you like innards), and chopping everything else into small pieces. This takes some heavy work with the cleaver — you want a whole lot of surface area. When the onion is brown, scrape it out and put it aside; toss in the chicken and let it get brown. (If I wanted to be fancy, I’d probably do this in batches for really good browning, because I love that tasty Mailliard reaction. Cook’s Illustrated says to saute it in batches on high heat, then add the onion back and cook it on low heat, but I am not that dedicated.)

Let it cook for about twenty minutes, stirring it up from time to time so you get more surface area browned. Then add back the onion as well as a roughly chopped rib or two of celery, maybe a small carrot, a couple of bay leaves, a few peppercorns. Add filtered water to cover.

Put on the pressure lid and bring the pressure cooker up to “high”. Keep it there for — I think I did forty minutes. (This is not the kind of stock recipe where you get any usable chicken at the end. I think those make crummy stock.) Let it come back down to atmospheric pressure slowly. Strain the stock and let it cool. Refrigerate.

(Then do this five more times, because if you’re making stock it’s probably because chicken is on sale, and if you’re going to make a big mess in the kitchen you might as well make a huge mess. That’s what I did anyway.)

The next day, remove the fat from the cold stock. I was going to clarify the stock, but I was feeling too tired and spacey to fuss with separating eggs, so I just melted it and filtered it through a clean kitchen towel. It seemed to do almost as good a job as an egg foam — not perfect, but certainly good enough. Then I reduced the living daylights out of it and ladled it into ice cube trays. I salt it when I use it.

I like this as a simple soup with a few parmesan ravioli.

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