Home Made Stock, what every self proclaimed foodie should know how to make!

There are so many self proclaimed foodies out there now a days, and each one claiming to be the best. But most of them forget the basics of cooking. Stock in a kitchen is like the foundation of a sky scraper! If you don't have a solid and sturdy foundation for your sky scraper, it will fall sometime during the construction of the building, or even worse, once the building is completed and then falls. What I'm trying to say is that if you  don't start with a good, flavourful stock in the beginning of your cooking process you will fall short in flavour somewhere down the line and will have to compensate for the lack of flavour later on, this is wasting time and ingredients. 
Like my Chef at the South African Chefs Academy told me: "Do it nice or do it twice!!!" 

So today I'm going to help you out and give you a step by step recipe for the perfect home made chicken stock! 

Ingredients 

• Bones of one deboned chicken(you can also use the chicken wings, giblets, necks and feet.) 
• 2 Celery stalks 
• 2 Leek (medium)
• 1 Large Onion 
• 2 Carrots (Large for sweeter stock medium for normal) 
• 6 Black pepper corns 
• 2 Bay leaves ( fresh is always better)
• 2 L of cold water
• 3 cloves of garlic (not traditionally in stocks but i like to add it for a little bit more flavour)
• 4 sprigs of thyme (fresh)
• 200 ml white wine (if you won't drink it don't use it, remember the foundation) 

Method 

1. Start by cutting your chicken bones in small pieces using a meat cleaver and preheating your oven to 200C/392F
2. Once you've finished cutting the bones place them on a oven sheet pan and place them in the oven and allow to brown and caramelise. It will take about 20-25 minutes
3. In the mean time you can start chopping your vegetables into rough mire poix. 
4. 2 minutes before the bones are ready to be taken out of the oven place a large stock pot onto a high heat and allow to heat up. 
5. Once pot is hot place the mire poix vegetables into the pot and stir frequently to prevent burning (do not use any fat or oil) 
6. Remove the bones from the oven and drain the fat from the sheet pan and place the bones into the pot with the mire poix. 
7. Discard the fat from sheet pan, place sheet pan onto hot stove hob and then pour the 200 ml of red wine onto sheet pan, thus deglazing the sheet pan.
8. Pour the wine into the pot with bones and mire poix.
9. Allow to reduce till sticky, then add in 1 L of the cold water along with all the herbs and spices (that includes the thyme,bay leafs, garlic, pepper corns)Turn heat down to simmer. 
10. You will see that there will still be fat and scum  on top of the water after you have added water, use a serving spoon to remove this scum and fat. ( you will need to repeat the removing of scum several times, so keep a bowl handy to place scum in)
11.  Once the 1L of water has reduced to half add the rest of the water and allow to either reduce to 1L or to 500ml. (the more you reduce it, the more intense the flavour of the stock will be.) 
12. Once it has reduced to your preference, pour the stock through a fine strainer and discard the bones, mire poix and herbs.
13. To make it a very nice clear stock you can place muslin cloth(also known as cheese cloth) in the strainer and pour the stock into it to pass once more. (If you want to make veloute sauce with the stock I would advise this method, other wise passing it through the strainer is more than fine.) 

Storing the stock

1. You could make ice cubes from the stock
2. You could place it into jam jars which you have sterilised(if you not sure how to do this please feel free to pop me a comment below and I will be more than happy to assist)
3. If you recuse the stock to 200 ml it will become like jelly once cooled down, this is great to store in small plastic bag, and easy to use if you making dinner for 2-6 people. (20ml per packet.)  

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