Roast your Bones, Drink the Marrow
Bone broth. Those two words are everywhere. Bone broth is magic. Trendy. It has untold alchemical powers. You can buy powdered bone broth at Whole Foods. I first heard of it when Marco Canora was trying to save Hearth after his rent got jacked up. He started selling Brodo in a window attached to the restaurant, and although it sounded great to me, and to my friend who told me about it, I didn’t have much hope for its commercial viability. Boy was I wrong.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. There is another name for bone broth that every cook on the planet knows: Stock. Or a stock with a few things added to flavor it. Stock is Day 1 in culinary school and most restaurant kitchens. Stocks are the flavorful liquids that really separate most restaurant cooking from home cooking. Compared to properly made restaurant stocks, even the best store bought stocks can’t compete. Don’t fall prey to the down homey nostalgia of chicken stock made from the whole chicken boiled in water like Grandma used to make alongside her dumplings. Unless that is REALLY what you want.
Consider this simple 3 step method for making chicken stock:
Cut a whole chicken into 3 inch pieces.
Roast the pieces.
Simmer in water with aromatics.
If you do these steps thoughtfully and carefully you’ll produce a stock better than anything store bought and most restaurants. I’ll elaborate.
The first thing you’ll notice is that we are using an entire chicken, and not just the bones. Using 3 inch pieces of chicken means that the thighs and drumsticks will be cut in half, and the bigger pieces will be broken down, effectively exposing bones, meat, and skin to browning during the roasting process. In place of the simmering step of this process I suggest using a pressure cooker for a better flavor extraction and yield. When you reduce your stock in a pot on the stove you are concentrating flavor by evaporating water, but water isn’t the only thing leaving the building. Those delicious aromas wafting through your kitchen? Thats the smell of flavor being carried out of your stock and into the void. A pressure cooker’s sealed environment extracts maximum flavor without letting any of it escape. And you can always choose to boil, reduce and concentrate later if you like.