The Stock Answer...

Chicken stock is a funny thing. It's one of the core ingredients in cooking, whether making a soup, a sauce, a casserole, whatever; yet most people don't make it, but rather buy the stuff in the can (or in box). Personally, I don't have a problem with that, although this guy does. But even though I don't think it's a hanging offense to use the canned stuff, I think homemade stock is superior, and since it's pretty easy (if somewhat time-consuming) to make, it's probably something everyone should know how to do.

I also wanted to do stock today as a blog post because I figured it would be a good excuse to laze around the house, baby-sitting the stock, and recovering from my run this morning. No such luck.
But I did manage to squeeze in all the steps necessary, so maybe that shows you can make stock-making fit your schedule.

Stock is really just "parts", plus aromatics, herbs, and water. I get my parts by cleaning out the freezer periodically. Backs, wings, giblets (minus the liver), those leftover chicken thighs I never got around to using, whatever. I've got roughly 8-12 lbs, and they're all destined for the pot.
The aromatics I'm using today are the "trinity" of celery, onion, and carrot, the herbs are a combination of parsley, thyme, and tarragon (I couldn't find bay leaf in my pantry, and it'll be fine without it), and the water is Cary's finest straight from the tap.

I'm following the recipe in James Peterson's "Sauces" cookbook for Brown Chicken Stock, but you really don't need a recipe for stock. In the most basic terms, you take your chicken parts, you rinse them off, and then put them in a single layer in a roasting pan.




Preheat the oven to 400deg, and pop the parts in for 20 minutes. Once they start getting golden, add the aromatics and stir everything up. Put it all back in the oven for 45 more minutes.



When the parts come out, they'll be nice and brown and smell really good. Then you take out your parts and put them in a stock pot (I used a 16qt, the book calls for a 25qt, you decide). Then you skim the excess fat from the roasting pan, put it over two burners on top of the stove, and turn up the heat. Add about a quart of water to the pan, and bring it to a boil, and scrape all those nice brown bits from the bottom of the pan.


Once you've got the pan deglazed, you (carefully) pour the water into the stock pot, and then you add about 8 more quarts of water. Bring it to a simmer and let it simmer for about 30-45 minutes, add your bouquet garni, turn the heat down to low, and leave it be for about 3-4 hours. Then you turn off the heat and let it cool.


Once you're done, just strain it with a colander to get all the big solids out, and then strain it thru a mesh strainer to get any finer solids out. What you do at that point is kind of up to you, but what I did was take about 8 ziploc freezer bags, and divvied up the stock among them, and froze the bags.

So that's it. Easy peasy. Your house will smell really good, and the next time you make something that calls for chicken stock, rather than reaching for the can, you'll thaw out some stock, and it'll taste 100 times better.

First, you start with a chicken...

I do most of the cooking in our house, and have done so ever since I met my wife, so I have a certain amount of sympathy for people who complain about not having the time to cook. I don't think it's ever impossible to find the time, but as my family has grown, I've found that my time has shrunk.
I mean, before we had kids, I had all the time in the world to cook, and I can definitely remember times when we ate pretty late, since I could afford to think about cooking things that were more involved. Even after we had kids, it wasn't really until the kids started having evening activities (gymnastics, horseback riding, the pool...) that I got cramped for time. Add in the natural pickiness of kids, which turns dinner into a crap shoot sometimes (I mean seriously, the things kids won't eat is amazing, and I could easily turn this into a boring post about kids and the mysteries of their dislikes), and I can come around to the idea of quick and easy meals.

So, that's the perfect segue to lead into the subject for this post, chicken. What I want to do is show how I try to make dinner a little easier and faster in our house, and I hope to show this by doing a chicken in 3 stages. The first stage is today, hence the title of this post.

One of the great merits of chicken is its simplicity and versatility. Off the top of my head, I think you can grill it, roast it, cut it up and bake it, fry it, and a bunch of other things. For today, since I'm trying to be fast, I decided to butterfly and grill my chicken.

1. I took the chicken below, and removed the insides:


2. Then, I cut along one side of the backbone...


3. And then down the other to remove the back bone, which goes in the same bag with the "inside stuff" for later.


4. Then I took my chef's knife, and split the breast bone to "butterfly" the chicken:





5. Since I was grilling it, I decided to rub the bird down with some achiote seasoning I got in the Hispanic section of the grocery. (That's why the bird is orange in this pic).


6. Then I went to the pool, because my youngest always wants to go to the pool.

7. After I got back from the pool, I fired up the grill, and seared the breast side over a high heat for about 4 minutes or so, just to brown the skin. Then I turned off two of the burners, moved the chicken so that it would cook indirectly, and covered the grill. 40-45 minutes later, it 's done once a thermometer registers 165deg in the breast (180 in the dark meat).

8. While that was cooking, I made some easy sides, rice and some zucchini.
For the zucchini, I cut it lengthwise into 1/4" slices (or thereabouts), and sliced some onions, and then tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper. Then I grilled them on the grill for a couple minutes per side, and then mixed it all together, like so:


So there you go. An easy chicken recipe, plus rice and green veg, all in less than hour (roughly), and with not a whole lot of cleanup, since everything except the rice went on the grill.
And this is the remains of the day

Here are the formal recipes:

Grilled butterflied chicken:
3 1/2 - 4 lb whole chicken
achiote seasoning (or coarse salt and freshly ground pepper)

Remove the giblets and neck, and rinse the chicken inside and out under water. Pat dry with paper towels.
Butterfly the chicken by cutting along one side of the backbone, and then the other (to remove the backbone), and then using the tip of your chef's knife (or some other heavy sharp knife), split the breastbone (but do not cut all the way the through). Turn over the chicken and press down on the chicken to flatten. Rub all over with the seasoning of your choice. If using charcoal, build a fire on one side of the grill, and wait until coals are ready (white). If using gas, turn heat to high on all burners until grill is hot, and then clean grill with grill brush, and brush grill with an oily paper towel (using tongs). Sear chicken, breast side down, over hot part of grill until skin is browned. If using gas, turn off two burners, move chicken to that side, and cover grill. If using charcoal, move chicken to the side of the grill without coals, and cover the grill. Temperature should be 375-400deg. The chicken will be done when a thermometer registers 165deg in the breast, 180deg in the thigh.


Rice:
1 cup white rice
2 cups water

Combine water and rice in a saucepan, and heat water to boiling. Reduce heat to lower, cover, and cook for 25 minutes. Season to taste.

Grilled Zucchini and Onions:
2-3 zucchini, sliced lengthwise into 1/8-1/4" slices
1/2 white onion, sliced into 3/8" slices
olive oil
coarse salt
freshly ground pepper

Using toothpicks (or skewers), skewer onion slices so that they stay together during grilling.
Drizzle zucchini and onions with olive oil in a bowl, and toss gently to cover. Season with salt and pepper. (It's important to be somewhat liberal with the salt, and to use coarse salt, not table salt, or the texture won't be right).
On a hot grill (over all burners on a gas grill set to high, or the hot part of a charcoal grill), lay zucchini slices and onion slices. Grill on each side for 2-4 minutes, or until a good set of grill marks is on both sides, and the zucchini is tender, and the onions are still slightly crunchy.
Remove the vegetables from the grill, and combine onion and zucchini in a bowl, after removing toothpicks from the onions. Using a knife, cut up zucchini and onions into smaller chunks.