My mother often made stock at home, so I tried out making stock soon after I started cooking. Michael Ruhlman’s is by far the simplest and easiest stock recipe that I’ve found, and it has given me the best results so far.

I used a combination of Michael Ruhlman’s chicken stock recipe on his blog, and the chicken stock recipe in “Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook’s Manifesto” and some other tips from recipes that I’ve read over the years. The difference between the two recipes is that in the book, he suggests chicken has cooked in water for several hours and then adding the vegetables and aromatics and then cooking for 1 hour more. On the blog, he cooks everything together.

When you break down a chicken, you can save the spare parts (e.g. backbone), in a bag in the freezer until you have enough to make stock. You can also save the carcass from a roasted chicken to make a dark roast chicken stock, .

Cooking the stock in the oven was a revelation to me! Stock should stay at a low simmer, it should not be allowed to come to a full boil because this will cause it to become cloudy. I find it difficult to make stock on the stove top, because the stock gets hotter and starts to boil when enough water evaporates, so I have to constantly adjust the heat. The oven required no adjustments in temperature, and I could just let it cook overnight while I slept. Mine cooked for 10 hours, which is the longest I’ve ever cooked a chicken stock; I used to think that you could only cook them for 2 hours maximum, since that’s how much time my other recipes suggested to cook chicken stock. Part of the reason this one needs to cook a minimum of 4 hours is because the temperature is so low.

Don’t add more then a few stalks of celery; celery actually has a strong flavor, so if you add too much, you will make celery stock, not chicken stock. Only add 1 or 2 carrots, since carrots are sweet and too many carrots will make your stock sweet. You can also add parsley stems (don’t add the leaves because it will turn the stock green), tomato skins or a very small amount of tomato (too much tomato will color the stock).

In addition, this is the clearest stock that I’ve ever made! Even though I know that the stock shouldn’t be boiled, what I thought was a “low simmer” on the stove top was actually too hot. This recipe showed me that the correct temperature is actually so low that you don’t see any movement or bubbles in the stock when it is cooking–but the oven will smell really nice from the chicken aromas.

In “Bouchon”, Thomas Keller (with Jeffrey Cerciello, Susie Heller, and Michael Ruhlman) says that “As with all stocks, you’re looking to remove impurities–fats and food particles–while extracting as much flavor and gelatin as possible out of the bones, vegetables, and aromatics. You do this not only through gently heat, but through gradual heat transitions as well; in other words, you don’t start with hot water, you begin with cold and bring it slowly up to heat. You skin often–especially in the beginning, when a lot of impurities will rise to the surface–through the cooking process: You can’t skim too much. You maintain a gently heat over a long time, and then you carefully strain the stock. All the steps are very simple, but each one is essential.”

In the picture with many bowls on the second row in the middle, the bowls are the stock ingredients in a colander from the first straining to get the solids out of the broth, the murky residue that falls to the bottom of the stock that should be discarded when you pour the strained stock through cheesecloth to get out fine particles. After this the stock is refrigerated, so that the fat congeals and can be skimmed off, and then I pour all but the sediment once again into another bowl.

* This technique of using the oven to maintain a low constant temperature can also be used for other types of stock. Adjust the total cooking according to the type of broth, e.g. usually fish, shrimp, and other seafood stock is cooked for a much shorter period of time (20 minutes to 1 hour though broths made from just lobster shells may be cooked for longer, possibly even hours).

Source: “Easy Chicken Stock” from “Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook’s Manifesto” by Michael Ruhlman; the recipe is also available on his blog.