Homemade Chicken Broth

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You’ll never regret doing this.  Pick a day when you’re a little bored and have a lot of time.  Turn on some music, enter your kitchen and make broth!  A really wild and crazy cook with lots of big pans might make several kinds of broth (pork? vegetable? chicken?) all on the same day, but most of us aren’t quite that hard-working.  So pick chicken as your go-to (unless you’re a vegetarian, of course).  Our friend, David (married to Frankie, my roommate from my junior year at Colorado College – oh so many years ago), says he only cooks by looking in the refrigerator and using what’s there.  This is ideal for that.

Pick your biggest pot for the top of the stove.  My mother gave me mine, saying that everyone needs a really big pot, and I’m still using it, probably 45 years later (fyi – it’s 6″ deep and 12″ across, but a slightly smaller one would work too).  Once your chicken has cooked for hours and hours and has been cooled and strained, divide the broth into the perfect size (for you) freezer containers and freeze.  I think 4 cups is ideal for 2 people and 2 cups for 1 person.

Homemade Chicken Broth

  • Servings: depends
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I kid you not.  You don’t need a recipe for this.  If you have some cooked leftover chicken, add the bones and skin to the pot, if it doesn’t have any super-intense spices on it.  If you’re buying uncooked chicken, don’t bother with buying a whole one.  The white meat will be wasted and doesn’t add much, except dry meat.   Instead buy wings, backs, necks.  I don’t do feet, but maybe you do.  Buy as much as you can get into your really BIG (not little) pot, maybe 4-5 pounds?  You want lots of bones and skin.

The next step may be controversial.  I’ve adopted the Chinese way of putting the chicken in the pot (nothing else at this point), filling the pot with cold water, barely covering the chicken, bringing it all to a boil, letting it boil for about 2 minutes (it will get really nasty and foamy looking) and then dumping that all into a colander in the sink, rinsing everything, including the chicken and the pan, off, putting the cleansed chicken back into the cleansed pot, re-filling the pot with cold water until it barely covers the chicken, bringing the water back to a simmer, and  then starting the real broth-cooking, adding the vegetables, etc. at that time.  The only catch to this is that it’s very tricky and scary when you pour out the water, because the pan is heavy and hot.  The advantage to this approach is that the time-consuming, slightly-annoying task of skimming off the scum for about 10 minutes has pretty much been alleviated.

If you don’t want to risk scalding yourself (or your dog who is beneath your feet, watching you), do this instead:  barely cover the chicken with water, bring it all to a hardy boil, turn the heat down to a simmer, stir, and skim off the scum which comes to the surface until it quits coming.  My mother would even take a paper towel and go around the edge of the pot to remove scum, so, of course, I do that too, if I’m using the scum-removing approach.

In either case, once your broth has had the scum removed, add lots of what you’ve got on hand.  Parsley?  check.  Carrots?  check.  Celery? check.  Onion? check.  Same with garlic.  Thyme?  Oregano? perfect – about 1 tsp each.  A leek? fabulous.  Salt, of course.  Start with about 1 T of kosher salt.  Pepper – about 1 tsp.  Tony Chachere’s Seasoning? YES! to taste.  Bay leaves?  1 or 2. Or you could go the Asian route and add ginger, scallions, lemongrass, maybe some cilantro,  a few slices of a jalapeno pepper, fish sauce, and/or star anise.

Simmer everything – with no lid or with a lid just partially on – for as long as you are willing, hopefully about 3 hours or more.  Do NOT let it boil hard.  I did that recently and ended with very cloudy stock.  Add hot water, if necessary, to keep the chicken covered.

Then cool, strain, and freeze.  FYI – my 4# of chicken backs yielded about 10 cups of broth.

Once cooled you’ll want to remove the fat that has come to the surface.  If you do this after it’s been frozen, you’ll have to kind of scrape it off before it defrosts.  I usually divide my broth into freezer containers, refrigerate it over night, remove the fat, and then freeze.

Recipe provided by BigLittleMeals and Andy & Ann

Carrot Ginger Soup

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So it’s going to be just us here for Easter, and we’ve been thinking about what we’ll have for dinner that will be properly celebratory, isn’t a pain in the butt to fix or clean up, serves just the two of us, and tastes great.  It’ll be a big little meal!
Andy first suggested that we have rabbit for dinner, but I managed to convince him of the impropriety of that.  But I thought that maybe something with carrots seemed appropriate.  Carrots and dip?   Too much work for just us. Carrot cake? Yum!  I have a fabulous recipe for that, should you ever want to try it, but it’s time-consuming to make.  Maybe carrot soup?  Yes!  It’s beautiful, it’s easy; it’s light, healthy, and delicious.  You can make it vegetarian (or not) by your choice of broth.  It’s gluten free (I think). The ingredients are easy to find.  Note: don’t think that you’ll just make half of it, cause it’s just you eating.  Fix the full recipe and you’ll have soup left for a lunch next week and some to freeze for another time.

Carrot Ginger Soup

  • Servings: 4
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adapted from Sara Deseran’s Asian Vegetables

Ingredients

  • 1/4 c butter (4 T)
  • 1 T minced fresh ginger
  • 4 tsp minced garlic
  • 1 or 2 serrano chilies, seeds and membrane removed and chopped
  • 3 c vegetable broth or chicken broth
  • 2 pounds carrots, peeled and cut into chunks – about 10 big (not little) ones
  • 1/4 tsp coriander
  • 1 tsp kosher salt
  • 3/4 c half and half.

Directions

Using a medium-sized pot over medium heat, melt the butter, then add the ginger, garlic, and chili and cook and stir until the garlic and chili have softened and are fragrant – maybe a minute.  Add the broth and chunks of carrot, coriander, and salt; bring to a boil then turn down to a simmer, cover, and cook until the carrots are very soft – about 25 minutes.  Now is the time to use your hand blender, if you have one.  We don’t – so we’ll put the carrot mixture into our food processor (a regular blender works here too) and puree it until it’s almost smooth.
At this point take note: if you’re freezing some, put it in your freezer dish now, because it will reheat better if you add the half & half after you defrost it.
Put the rest of the carrot mixture back in the pot, add the half and half, decreasing the amount a little, if you’ve frozen some. Return the soup to a simmer.  Put it into bowls and have a HAPPPY EASTER!
Recipe provided by Big Little Meals and Andy and Ann

Alton Brown’s French Toast

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French toast1
Alton Brown’s French Toast from the Food Network.

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Andy and I have had some serious disagreements about French Toast.  Since Andy does all the breakfast cooking (well, I do dish up granola now and then), he gets the blame when the French Toast doesn’t turn out perfect.  After years – maybe decades – of imperfect FT, Andy discovered this Alton Brown recipe, and, if done precisely, is both easy and just right.  Things do get better.

One note here: we always use a sweet, as opposed to a sour dough, french bread (from the Basque Boulangerie, if you’re local) rather than the suggested challah or brioche, but I’m sure they would be wonderful too.

A second note: we tried freezing the leftover finished slices of French Toast, and they freeze well!  Just be sure they’re cool when you put them in the freezer and don’t pile them on top of each other – until they’re frozen.  To defrost and eat I simply popped a slice in the toaster and it turned out great (though you might have to adjust the length of the toasting).

Alton Brown's French Toast

Recipe adapted from Alton Brown and the FoodNetwork.com.

  • 1 C half-and-half
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 T honey, warmed in microwave for 20 seconds
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 8 (1/2-inch) slices day-old or stale country loaf, brioche or challah bread. (note: we prefer to use sweet – as opposed to sour – baguettes sliced into about 16 slices)
  • 4 T butter

In medium size mixing bowl, whisk together the half-and-half, eggs, honey, and salt. This can be done the night before. When ready to cook, pour the mixture into a shallow bowl and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Dip bread into mixture, allow to soak for 30 seconds on each side, and then remove to a cooling rack that is sitting in a sheet pan, and allow to sit for 1 to 2 minutes.

Over medium-low heat, melt 1 T of butter in a 10-inch nonstick saute pan. Place 2 slices of bread at a time into the pan (or 5 or 6 if using a baguette) and cook until golden brown, approximately 2 to 3 minutes per side. Remove from pan and place on rack in oven for 5 minutes. Repeat with all slices. Serve immediately with maple syrup, whipped cream, or, as we prefer, BigLittleMeals Strawberry Sauce!

Recipe brought to you by BigLittleMeals.com and Andy and Ann.

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