And Still More Chicken Stock

I was just about out of chicken stock. I like having 1 cup containers of stock. A little good stock tends to improve a dinner. I made a variation of my cavetelli with sausage and broccoli last week. Usually it is all tossed in a bowl. This time, I made a quick roux, thickened the chicken stock, tossed everything together with some mozzarella cheese and put it in the oven to melt. It was pretty good.

Instead of just throwing together a stock by feel, I decided to follow Ruhlman's ratio for stock. 2 parts bones, 3 parts water, and then about 20% by weight mirepoix. I had the bones from 4 chickens in the freezer weighing in at just over 6 pounds. A pint is a pound the world around...so I needed 9 pounds of water...9*16=144ouces of H2O. Into the big pot that is really a roaster and not a stock pot.

That's 11:58 in the morning-I'm not crazy enough to start making stock at midnight. Well, I am but I didn't do it. The bones thawed as the water reached a simmer. Then there is the yeeecchhh you have to get rid of.

Once the yeeech had subsided and everything was at a good simmer, the lid went on and the roaster went into a 200 degree oven. This is a great idea. It was around 1:00 when it went into the oven. After 5 hours of completely hands off simmering, I added 2 pounds of rough cut mirepoix and about a tablespoon of tomato paste.

And then back into the oven for 2 more hours. I strained it through a colander and then again through some cheesecloth. I keep an ice packed filled with water (lesson very learned) in the freezer. Once that went in, it kind of created some weird swirls.

Once cold, I put it in the fridge overnight. Skimmed a little fat off the next day and set up small packages of stock. The small ziplocks have 1 cup of stock. The containers hold about a cup and a half.

With this 3:2 ratio, the stock became viscous when cold but did not gel up. I think I was probably closer to using a 1:1 ratio earlier. The stock has a very nice flavor. There is no salt in it, I have to remember to account for that when cooking. I once made a very bland pot of soup. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with a salt shaker though. So currently there is the meat from 3 chickens in the freezer along with a little over a gallon of stock. Should last a little while.

Recovered

Well, more a stay of execution..due to some construction issues, my hat-trick of all nighters got postponed. Only had to do one this week. But it was enough to make me groggy for a few days. There was one New Year's Eve (at least 15 years ago) where I convinced a handful of people to stay up until 6 in the morning because that was the "real" New Year. For some reason they bought it, stayed up and we all had fun. One of them was silly enough to marry me...but I can't stay up like that anymore.

Did a handful of cooking this weekend. Mostly made Christmas cookies. I would delight you with photographs, but the camera was brought to a holiday party on Friday and got left behind. If I remember, I can get it Monday morning. We baked a few batches of sugar cookies using one of Ruhlman's ratios. The cookies came out very nicely and the dough was very easy to roll. In the first batch, some flour was left behind. I omitted about half an ounce of flour from the second batch and the dough came together well. The sugar cookie is a slight variation from Ruhlman's 1-2-3 cookie dough (1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, 3 parts flour). Perhaps there is a slight rounding error in the modified ratio. In the end, a few tablespoons not making it into the dough isn't the end of the world.

We also tried to modify the recipe to make some gluten free cookies. Without really thinking, we swapped out the flour and used a gluten free baking mix. The dough came together, it rolled out well, held shapes when the kids used the cookie cutters....but when it baked the shapes just oozed together. After the gluten free blobs cooled, I was able to re-cut some cookies. Some of the crumbs got used in a different dessert. The rest will become the crust of a gluten free cheesecake. The cheesecake is a family favorite. The gluten free crust is a continual work in progress. This time, I'm going to add some sugar to the crumbs and the pulverize with a food processor. There should be enough butter in there already. Press the crumb into a springform and move on with the rest of the cheesecake.

Just a reminder that in gluten free baking, flour and gluten free flour mix are not interchangeable. I knew that, but forgot it. I doubt I will forget it again quickly.