Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Eating and Drinking => Cooking, Storing and Preserving => Topic started by: sclarke624 on August 28, 2009, 20:30
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I added two cubes of chicken stock to my fresh tomato sauce for bolegnaise. I was amazed at how salty it made the sauce. I never add salt to my cooking, so it was really noticable. Are there any brands which are not so salty.
I'm not sure how to make homemade stock, I know, I know just never learnt how.
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Save all your chicken bones and carcasses in the freezer. When you have a good amount put in a saucepan with all your old veg in the fridge eg onions, carrots, celery, leeks. No spuds, no greenstuff. Add a few peppercorns, a couple of bay leaves, any other hard herb you have also. Absolutely no salt. Cover with water and simmer for a few hours skimming the top occasionally. You can leave it simmering away happily for as long as you like. The more you reduce it the stronger the stock will be. Strain, cool and store in fridge or freezer.
This uses up leftovers, inedible bits and saves a fortune. You also control the salt in your food.
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Take chicken carcas and skin, cover with water, add chopped onion carrot herbs, celery if you have it, bring to boil, then turn to simmer for a couple of hours. Strain and season to taste.
Sometimes, nowadays, you have to boil hard to reduce it to get any flavout to speak of. :(
It depends I suppose on the quality of your chicken ::)
Sorry Ice you beat me to it :D
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:tongue2:
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Thanks for that. OH doesn't put salt on his food at all either from choice not health, so tasted even more salty to him.
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Stock cubes are very salty..... :wacko: For cheating I use the knorr touch of taste bottles of stock. It's a bit more expensive but not saltyand a much better flavour. Nigella uses it and if it's good enough for Nigella, it's good enough for me... :D
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if you have to use a stock cube for flavour use 1/2 of one and no extra salt.
I always have stock in the freezer made as suggested here, it's much better.
Also if I make up a batch of really nice gravy from a roast etc I make a bit too much and freeze it, then if you make a meal that requires gravy, but has no meat juices to make it nice, just use the frozen stuff to enrich your gravy granule stuff. :)
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if you have to use a stock cube for flavour use 1/2 of one and no extra salt.
Think I made a mistake then using two and only about a pint and half of water. Stupid me. Treated them like oxo cubes.
For cheating I use the knorr touch of taste bottles of stock. It's a bit more expensive but not saltyand a much better flavour. Nigella uses it and if it's good enough for Nigella, it's good enough for me... :D
That sounds good, parsnip. If I don't get to make my own stock, I'll try that.
Only recently started using whole chickens as we have had chicken breast for about 25 years. I remember one day when the kids were small working out that it was cheaper and more meat on a breast than a whole chicken.
A couple of months ago my daughter cooked us a whole chicken I was amazed by how much meat was on it, and since trying myself there was enough meat on my chickens to use instead of breast. They must have started plumping the chickens up a bit in the past 20 years. I used to be hard up so I must of had a good reason. Chicken breast used to be reasonable price but its shot up nowdays.
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If you have a friendly butcher, ask him nicely and he can usually provide chicken carcasses. I leave my stock in the oven (aga) overnight. Tastes great but makes house smell a bit meaty come the morning!
NB Use saucepan with no plastic bits on!
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Butcher great source of stock bones, but roast them first before making the stock for a better flavour.
SS
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If I do need a bit of stock (and haven't any proper stock in the fridge), Marigold vegetable stock powder in the drums has enough oomph to replace chicken for most things and isn't as salty as most stock cubes. They do an organic one too, but I have to confess that I use the the standard - available from all good supermarkets, as they say!
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One of my plot neighbours recently mentioned the high salt content of Knorr cubes and advised using Kallo cubes if homemade stock isn't available.
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Think you just used too much !
The Boss uses 2 cubes for 7 litres (whatever that is in pints).
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Think you just used too much !
The Boss uses 2 cubes for 7 litres (whatever that is in pints).
Would seem so as 7 litres is about 3 and half bottles of coke size LOL (addict) and I used the equivalent of not even half a 2ltre bottle.
Found some of the stock parsnip reccomended today, so gonna try that and ask the butcher in the village for some bones.........yes we actually have a butchers shop......few and far between now. Very expensive in there though, as its a flashy one with all sorts of awards.
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Stock cubes are very salty..... :wacko: For cheating I use the knorr touch of taste bottles of stock. It's a bit more expensive but not saltyand a much better flavour. Nigella uses it and if it's good enough for Nigella, it's good enough for me... :D
Parsnip triied it loved it.
Thanks
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Only recently started using whole chickens as we have had chicken breast for about 25 years. I remember one day when the kids were small working out that it was cheaper and more meat on a breast than a whole chicken.
A couple of months ago my daughter cooked us a whole chicken I was amazed by how much meat was on it, and since trying myself there was enough meat on my chickens to use instead of breast. They must have started plumping the chickens up a bit in the past 20 years. I used to be hard up so I must of had a good reason. Chicken breast used to be reasonable price but its shot up nowdays.
My dear old Mum grew up during the war and her Mum taught her to get the maximum out of a piece of meat, which she passed on to me. Their family of six could make a medium-sized shin of beef provide three meals - a roast, a cottage pie a couple of days later, and cold meat for suppers and sandwiches. And then there was the dripping, for bread and dripping.
Mum's shown me how you can do the same with a chicken.
A good-size whole chicken can be a really economical meal provider. Even better if you're cooking for just one or two. I'm single and can often get five meals plus a couple of litres of stock out of one chicken.
I like to buy a whole, good quality chicken and roast it first. This provides a lovely roasted chicken breast (and maybe a few bits of darker meat) to have withthe classic roast spuds etc on a Sunday.
Then, when the chickens cooled, pick of as much of the really good meat as you can - there'll be another whole breast, thighs, drumsticks etc. If you can resist the temptation to stuff it down your gob as you pick it ;) the meat you get from this can be frozen, or keep for a couple of days and easily stretch to two more meals - perhaps a pie and a risotto.
Finally, as detailed above, boil the carcass for stock - but don't throw the carcass away. Let it cool completely and you should be able to tear it up and pick another good handful of meat off all the hard-to-reach places, which I always find is more than enough to either make two or three chicken pasties or something similar, or to put back in some of the stock with some vegetables etc to make a chicken soup.
Using this method, paying that bit extra for a free range or even organic chicken isn't a false economy - not only will you get a much better flavour, but you could get the basis of five or six meals from a £10 bird. Not bad economics when you think about it.
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Brilliant post smudgeboy. Buying a whole chicken makes much more economic sense. If you don't want to roast a whole one then learn how to cut it into portions. A quick search of youtube will probably find something along those lines.