So, I decided to try this today with a small batch of chicken stock made from a leftover Costco chicken carcass.
I’m regularly underwhelmed by how little flavor and color I get with my chicken stocks. I’ve been roasting the chopped carcass and carrots, blackening an onion, but I thought I’d try adding browned tomato paste this time.
How much to use in a gallon of liquid? Any special techniques?
I rarely use tomato paste… I do keep a tube of Cento around, but hardly ever use it.
For me, roasted tomatoes (cherry or grape as they are usually more flavorful most of the year) and whole garlic cloves, either under the broiler or in a hot sauce pan with a little EVOO. Get good color on them and then blend it to a puree and add it to your stock.
For a gallon I’d go with at least a cup of tomatoes and three large cloves of garlic.
My chef/roomie uses browned paste in most of his cooking. When he’s here there’s always a container of it in my fridge.
Its fairly potent and adds a lot of umami and a little sweetness, so I would start with a tablespoon or two.
You can always add more.
I use browned tomato paste in a lot of things, but not regularly enough with chicken stock to have a measurement.
I use one ice cube sized piece in my weekly “taco filling” ( husband calls it mince and eats it like chili) which calls for one cup of chicken broth. I use it with a cup of reconstituted chicken Better Than Bouillon. The recipe also calls for a can of diced tomatoes. I started using it because I wanted more tomato flavor.
I don’t used cooked chicken carcasses in chicken stock, although I know a lot of good cooks do. I don’t usually have one.
I use raw carcasses, usually breasts, and can’t help but wonder if cooked vs raw it makes a difference.
My usual chicken stock is…
Leftover all chicken parts, bones etc.
Two tbs tomato paste,
A couple of leftover onion and celery bit ends, or some of them fresh if I don’t have ends,
Same for a bit of carrots
All into Instant Pot for 2 hrs high pressure cook. Takes about 3 hours total given pressure up/down time.
For your main question, given the leftovers from about a 6 pound total chicken, I add about 2 quarts of liquid.
Then, after skimming fat and getting rid of solid parts, I cook this 2 quarts down to about 1 quart total remaining liquid that I freeze.
From there it is about half-half for normal usage. But I further supplement it.
For example, I made tortellini soup tonight for 6 people using one frozen quart bag of stock, which I added one quart of water to. But I also sautéed abt 2 oz each onion/celery/carrot and then boiled them in that one extra quart of water (then drained and added back to the stock).
Made for a very rich soup. And the leftovers are already, even at room temp, gelatinized/thickened up.
OK, 2 Tbs per 1/2 gallon.
Thanks.
Do brown the Paste well if you do not want a red hue to your Stock/Broth.
I would suggest that starting with a cooked Chicken Carcass is not going to make the best Stock.
Duly noted. Sometimes you gotta dance with the one than brung ya.
Care to offer reasons why a denatured carcass is deficient? Many preps call for roasting/browning/denaturing no matter what. And I always add back all the sucs/gelatin from the clamshell, so what specifically is lost? I also like to use some fresh chicken along with the carcass chop when I have it available.
I do wish Costco would employ a lechefrite of some sort to collect the rotisserie drippings. Defatted drippings would be a fabulous addition to stocks.
Crap, now you’ve made me hungry–time to bust out my rotisserie and lechefrite!
I am not sure what makes the difference but I would imagine that the Meat and Skin that are eaten and thus not in the Stock Pot may be at least part the Reason.
I found that using Carcass from roasted Poultry has less Collagen/Gelatin as well as a lighter flavor. My guess is that the Meat has absorbed a good bit of it from the connective Tissues and the Skin has been eaten. Even when making a Dark/Brown Stock, cooking the uncooked Bones and Bits all that stuff is still present and thorough deglazing ensures that nothing is lost.
I also know that a Stock made from very lean Bones doesn’t yield a very good Stock either which makes me believe that having the Meat along with it’s connective Tissues is important for Flavor and Body.
Yes, losing all that Glace is a shame but it would be VERY salty. Those Costco Chickens are not shy on the Salt!
We always have a bone stock and tomato paste sitting in the fridge. For bones we use chicken and pork (hard to get beef bones where we are) and roast them in the oven first. We also add your typical onions, carrot, and celery plus whatever scrap herbs and veg. Then we pressure cook for one hour. About half the time we’ll blend the vegetable fiber into the stock, depending on what our plans for it are. We don’t mix in the tomato paste until were cooking a specific dish though.
One trick I’ve found is to go to the local wet market where the seafood sellers often deshell the shrimp for customers. I can get huge sacks of shrimp heads and shells for free this way! Those make a very intense shrimp stock.
Do you press the heads and shells after they simmer?
For the shrimp stock? I actually blend the raw heads and shells with a little water to make a goopy mess. Then after pressure cooking I strain through a China cap and press. Works great!
Assuming you make chicken stock on the regular, try this sometime. I saw it from a friend’s post. She has a cookbook she’s working through about baking soups, and she said that if you put all your normal chicken stocky things plus water in a dutch oven at 300 “all day” whatever that means, the resulting chicken soup is very different from the stovetop method. In color and taste.
Interesting.
Right? I’d never heard of oven soup before last week.
It might have something to do with lidded pot temps in ovens being higher than the oven itself.
Cover on, off or in between? I’m thinking it might have elements of roasting, like when you braise in the oven instead of on the stove.
I don’t know. What I do know is that covered vessels in ovens register higher than the oven.
@shrinkrap @kaleokahu apparently cover on. I went back to the friend’s feed and located this recipe she snuck into the comments. https://jmoreliving.com/2019/10/18/why-you-should-be-cooking-your-chicken-soup-in-the-oven/?fbclid=IwAR2HIZGABDiEqUDtDusL3NBjg1Hq9TStMZYsc92x94ZktMXAuXbRDc4yLXc
