Kitchen Drunkard

Simple and delicious

Lots of great meals start with a good stock. While it’s perfectly respectable to use the ready made stuff you buy from the super market (preferably organic), with a few minutes of prep on a weekend afternoon you can create your own fantastic stock.

There are very few rules to making stock so use your imagination and impart whatever flavors you like. For me I start with whatever root veggies I have on hand, some fresh herbs, and of course some free range organic chicken from the butcher. The carcass/bones of a whole chicken is ideal (and cheap!) but a few legs will work just fine.

Get yourself a big pot. The one in the picture above is 8 quarts and typically yields approximately 4 liters of stock.

• 2 chicken legs, or the bones from a whole chicken
• 1 sweet potato
• carrots
• celery
• 1 red onion
• few sprigs of fresh rosemary
• few sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2-3 dried bay leaves
• 1 tsp whole pepper corns

Put all the ingredients into the pot and fill with cold tap water. Bring to a boil and then reduce to the lowest possible simmer and cook for at least 3 hours.

Stock will keep in the fridge for a few weeks or several months in the freezer. Hint: freeze the stock in ice cube trays and then store in a big zip lock bag for convenient access later on.