Chicken Stock

Using your chef's knife, cut vegetables into pieces. You'll notice I don't have celery. That's OK! The most important ingredient is the chicken, the veggies and herbs are flexible.

If you have a lot of time to make stock, pieces can be large, if you are in a rush, cut them smaller. The shapes don't matter because we will be removing all of the vegetables at the end.

Place your pot on the burner and turn the heat to medium high (7 or 8 on most stovetops). After a few minutes, add in a drizzle of cooking oil. Just enough to coat the bottom of the pan. Next, add your vegetables. Cook them until they begin to smell fragrant and turn translucent with a light brown color to them stirring them as needed.

Note: We are making a brown stock today which means that both our veggies and our chicken have been cooked before we start. If you start with raw chicken and raw vegetables, you get white stock

Just plop it right on top of your veggies. Nothing fancy about this step.

OK, this part's kind of gross, but you know that jelly in the bottom? Make sure that goes in the pot! It helps add flavor and body to your finished stock.

Next add enough cold water to cover the chicken in your pot. My pot was a little shorter than my chicken, that's OK. We use cold water because some of the flavor can only be released by cold water and some needs hot, so this way we're hitting them all.

I used bay leaf and poultry seasoning ( usually a combination of thyme, sage, marjoram, rosemary, black pepper, and nutmeg. Other blends may contain celery seed, celery salt and occasionally ground cloves) but if you don't have those seasonings you can skip them altogether or use anything that you do have from the list above. Just be careful not to overdo it. You need about 2 teaspoons of herbs combined.

Now turn the heat up and bring the water to a simmer. You should see little bubbles now and then but not a hard rolling boil. Gently cooking the chicken releases more flavors than boiling it hard. Once it's gently simmering, turn the heat down to low (2-4) ) to keep it gently simmering.

At this point, the longer you can cook the stock, the better. Most sources recommend simmering 4-6 hours, but at least 2 would do the trick. Keep an eye on your stock to make sure the temperature is still perfect for simmering , if the water gets too low to cover the chicken, add more. You should see the color of the stock darken.

When you are happy with your stock, you can use a strainer to strain out everything in the pot. It's ok if some herbs make their way through. Now the chicken and vegetables are finally trash (although you could totally still eat both).

Unless you are using your stock as soon as you finish making it, you'll need to cool it down before storing it. Here are a few safe ways to rapidly cool your stock.

• Add some ice cubes - only downside is this will dilute the flavor of your stock

• Place your stock in a shallow dish and place directly in the refrigerator, stir it every 15 minutes or so until cool

• Place your stock in a metal bowl and put another container of ice underneath the bowl. Stir the stock constantly until cold.

Store your stock in a plastic or glass container with a lid. It can be stored in the refrigerator for 1 week or the freezer for about 6 months. If you are going to freee it, don't fill the container all the way full, liquids expand when they freeze. Leave about 1 inch of space at the top. Don't forget to clean the kitchen!