Fastest Chicken Stock, Other ''Speed Tricks''?

16 years ago

Let's say you've decided to make a dish tonight. It calls for some very tasty homemade chicken stock. Darn, you've allowed the freezer to run dry of stock. So you need to make some, as quickly as you possibly can. But if you're like me, your usual chicken stock is a long, low and slow ritual, many hours of contemplative simmering. What to do?

I know, give the kids $10 and have them run to the store and get some low-sodium tetra-pack chicken stock - I'd usually do that too. But let's say you're in one of those stubborn moods when you insist on cooking from scratch.

What are your recipes and tricks for ''speed chicken stock''?

I tried one recently. It worked, for what I needed it for, but would need another step or two to be suitable for most recipes that require chicken stock. Here it is:

- Find some chicken scraps amidst the refrigerator velcro. I had two wings and a thigh from a mostly-consumed rotisserie chicken. Pluck out the bones. Leave the cartilage, skin, and fat on - we're in a hurry, right?

- Throw the chicken scraps, plus some onion, celery, a bit of carrot, a bit of garlic, a bay leaf - whatever you'd usually put in your long-simmering chicken stock pot - into a food processor. Zap it into finely shredded mush. Sounds yummy already, urgh.

- Scrape the mush into a pot, add boiling water and some white wine. about 6X as much liquid as solid. Uncovered, high heat, get it to a fast boil, keep the spurs on, boil it as hard as your range can manage and keep boiling until 1/3 of the liquid is gone. Or 1/2, if you have time.

- I stopped here, with an intensely flavoured but very cloudy stock. I didn't need a clear stock for my recipe. Elapsed time from when I started rummaging in the refrigerator was a little over 30 minutes. The additional step would have been to strain the cloudy stock through cheesecloth or a chinois or both, maybe 5 minutes?

Okay, I know that doesn't sound very appetizing, was a crime against cookery, guilty as charged, but it worked and I was able to make dinner with only a modest delay.

Any favorite ''speed stock'' tricks? In fact, let's broaden this:

Do you have any tricks for significantly speeding up common cooking tasks, preparations, or recipes? Anyone got a 30-minute coq au vin, a super-quick boeuf borguignon, an instant bolognaise? You all showed me ''speed risotto'', there's got to be more speed tricks here.

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Comments (13)

teresa_nc7
16 years ago
Using a pressure cooker would shave 15 minutes off that time!

Teresa
ruthanna_gw
16 years ago
Put 1/2 pound of chicken hearts into a pan along with canned chicken stock, some water and a halved onion (remove the outer layers of skin but leave the inner layers on). Bring to a boil; then immediately turn the heat down, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes. You'll end up with a richly flavored broth by the time you finish the other prep work for the dish.

When baking winter squash like butternuts or acorns, halve and seed them and put cut side down on a plate in the microwave oven and precook on high for about 4 to 6 minutes. This will cut the oven baking time down by a lot.
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shaun
16 years ago
I would have skipped the food processor step and like Ruthanna, I would have used the pressure cooker.
lowspark
16 years ago
Pressure cooker here too. A trick, I might add, that I learned here. From Claire_de_luna. I usually let my chicken pressure cook for 45 -50 min for a rich stock but it can easily be done in 15-20 if you are in a hurry. Only down side is no opportunity to refrigerate and skim off the fat but oh well!

I can't think of any other real speed tricks. The pressure cooker for this and other applications is really my go to speed trick!
lindac
16 years ago
I'm with you on the Cuisinart smashing, I don't have a pressure cooker any more.
I would have used a box of broth and added a couple of wings an onion and celery and boiled it for 20 minutes or so.
Gina_W
16 years ago
If you roast chickens or buy rotisserie chickens - save the carcass in the freezer. The already-cooked carcass flavors the stock more quickly than starting from raw. Costco rotisserie chix carcasses make the best quick stock.
arley_gw
16 years ago
Another PC recommendation here. After I have a roast chicken, I throw the carcass in the pot (and if nobody's looking, you can throw bones off peoples' plates in there too--the PC will sterilize anything), add an onion or two or carrot and celery, cover with water and bring it up to pressure; by the time I've done all the other dishes the PC has produced some excellent and fairly effortless stock.

Note that stock made in a PC will by nature be a little cloudier than a stock that's slow simmered for hours. (Makes sense, you're denaturing some proteins.) But if you're after a hearty good flavor with little effort, you can't beat the PC.

I know I sound like a broken record saying wonderful things about the PC, but I really can't see having a kitchen without at least one of them. Steamed artichokes in 15 minutes, risotto in 6 minutes without stirring...Last night I had a really tasty curry in about 15 minutes...
dcarch7 d c f l a s h 7 @ y a h o o . c o m
16 years ago
My quick chicken stock:

1. Get whatever chicken bones and chicken meat you have and put in a container with 1/2 the water.

2. If you don't have enough chicken parts, use about 5% beef or pork, no one can tell.

3. Totally cheating, use half of a pack of that flavoring that comes with ramen noodles.

4. Put container in microwave and boil the other half water in a pressure cooker. After water starts to boil, add everything in pressure cooker. 15 minutes later, you will have very nice "Chicken stock".

dcarch
metaxa
16 years ago
But wait!!!

What if you have no carcass, no bones???

Ground chicken and gelatin leaves.

Honest. Dump a package of ground chicken into the pot along with the usual suspects and boil, then simmer. You will need to skim.

Strain and clarify if wanted. Add softened gelatin leaves and simmer a bit.

I bet I could do that in under 30.
John Liu
Original Author
16 years ago
Here's a pressure cooker question. When using a pressure cooker, are you ''reducing'' a stock? That is, does the vapor escape so the remaining liquid becomes more concentrated, as would happen if you boiled or simmered an uncovered pot?

I'm quite curious about what goes on inside a pressure cooker. Do any come with windows, so you can peer inside?
Teresa_MN
16 years ago
If you can find Knorr liquid stocks they are as close to the real thing as you can get. It is thick like molasses. I can't find it in my area anymore but I did find a product called Better than Bouillon. It runs $5 a jar at specialty grocers. But I did see the chicken stock version at Walmart for about $3.40. This brand of turkey stock is to die for. Some of the specialty grocers sell the lower salt versions also. I have tried the Seafood Stock, Lobster, Ham Stock, Chicken, Turkey, Vegetable, Beef and some of the lower salt Beef and Chicken versions. The beef stock is what I use for French Dips - it is that good! It is an excellent product. I went to cooking school in France and Italy more than 30 years ago. This is one of the best products I have encountered in a long time. Try it!
Teresa_MN
16 years ago
I just read Gina's comment. Costco rotisserie chicken makes fabulous stock. Here is Minnesota I usually save up the carcasses and on a day I am snowed in I make a huge pot of stock, reduce it and freeze it either in small containers or in ice cube trays. The cubes are great for those times you need just a small amount of stock. I do this with turkey wings also.
arley_gw
16 years ago
John, the pressure cooker has a gasket so most of the vapors do not escape. (If the vapors were able to escape easily, the pressure would never get above atmospheric pressure.) A small percentage of the vapors do escape, so if you cook something long enough in a PC you can cook it dry. (Not good.) Most modern PC's, though, are quite efficient and don't need a whole lot of liquid to get them up to pressure.

I would speculate that the way in which a PC makes stock quickly is not in its 'reducing' function, which I guess does occur to a limited extent, but rather in the fact that all the extraction of flavors is going on more efficiently at around 250 degrees (I think that's the internal temp of a PC on high pressure) rather than at 208-212 degrees (the temp of a simmering open pot).

If you're curious about PC's, there have been many threads on them here and in the Cookware forum. Miss Vickie also has good info. I've cooked with some of her recommended cookers; she knows whereof she speaks.

Here is a link that might be useful: miss vickie

Fastest Chicken Stock, Other ''Speed Tricks''?

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Fastest Chicken Stock, Other ''Speed Tricks''?

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