Re: Chicken Soup recipe

"The Bubbo" <oyobo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I don't know that I can answer your question specifically, but I know that
> when I switched over from whole chickens to just chicken wings my stocks
> became much richer in flavor. I use a 3 or 5 pound bag of frozen wings. I
> put
> them in a pot with water, bring them to a boil and let them boil about tem
> minutes. This is the part that I think a lot of people will disagree with,
> I
> strain the wings and dump the water and rinse the wings. This gets rid of
> all
> the scummy grey stuff and I don't have to continually skim the pot.
>
> Wings back in the pot with a whole onion, some carrots, celery, salt,
> peppercorns and then a set of herbs and spices depending on whether I am
> making regular stock or asian. I add enough water to make everything float
> and
> bring it to a simmer.
>
> It simmers for an hour or two and I roast a whole chicken. When the stock
> is
> done I strain it and toss everything in it, they've all given up their
> life at
> this point. I shred the roasted chicken and add that along with new
> veggies
> and there's my soup.

I agree with the part about boiling first. Or parboiling, I guess they call
it. I take all of the raw parts and parboil those first. I then dump the
water and rinse these parts. Then I put these parboiled parts, parts that
have already been roasted, plus the vegetables into the pot, with the water.
I essentially don't have to do any skimming if I've parboiled the raw parts.
All the parts I use are chopped into 2 to 3 inch pieces with a cleaver
before making the stock. If the parts are semi-frozen, the chopping goes a
lot better without splattering as much.

I once made a stock totally out of chicken wings. It makes a very gelatinous
stock. The chicken wing tips, which have a cartilage like material rather
than bone, dissolve pretty completely.

The last batch of stock I made a couple of weeks ago used the leftover raw
parts from making a fried chicken (wings, back, ribs, etc.), a roasted duck
carcass, and a roasted goose carcass, plus the raw neck and giblets from all
three, minus the livers. This also resulted in a very gelatinous stock,
about three quarts worth.

I took this last batch of poultry stock (chicken + duck + goose) and used
about two quarts of it as a base to make Philadelphia pepper pot soup. I
love that soup with those little pieces of mystery meat floating around in
it (tripe!). The remainder of the stock I froze in ice cube trays. I use the
cubes a few a time as that is more convenient. One day last week I was in
the mood for egg drop soup for breakfast, so I pulled out ten cubes for
that. More often it's for deglazing a pan or for making rice.

I usually simmer the stock for quite a few hours, five or six or so. No real
need to go beyond two hours or so, but it's such a nice aroma and I make it
when I have the time (not that it requires anything but a quick check every
hour or two). By the end, everything has definitely given up all the flavor
it has in it. Make sure on these long simmers it is at a quite low
temperature. There shouldn't be but the faintest trace of bubbles surfacing.
The last batch I checked with a digital thermometer. The temperature varied
between 155 and 180 degrees, most of the time probably at 165-170 degrees.

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