What she’d tell you
Ten minutes of work and three hours of leaving it alone. Every carcass you have ever thrown away was two litres of this, and once you have made it once you will never buy a stock cube again without feeling slightly guilty.
What you need
Written for 8. Change that in the app and the amounts follow.
Tick things off as you get them ready.
Continue to the method ↓
How it goes
Break the carcass up so it packs into the pot, and add any bones, skin or jelly from the roasting tin.
Halve the onions (skins on) and add them with the roughly cut carrot and celery, the garlic, bay and pepper.
Cover with cold water by about 3 cm and bring it slowly to a bare simmer.
Skim off the grey foam that rises in the first ten minutes, then leave it, barely trembling, for 3 hours.
Strain it and let it cool. Do not add salt.
Chill it overnight and lift the set fat off the top. Keep the fat: it is worth more than most of what you cook with.
If you haven’t got it
Chicken Carcass
a bag of wings or thigh bones, which most butchers give away
Celery
leek tops, or the fennel fronds nobody knows what to do with
Keeping it
Four days in the fridge, set to a jelly if it is any good.
Freezes for six months. Freeze it in a muffin tin and you have stock cubes that are actually stock.
