I’m counting this as a dish, even though we never consume it as its own dish. Homemade stocks are easy to make and they are delicious. It’s so much nicer to have a homemade stock for…well, for everything. You know exactly what is in it, you’ve controlled the seasoning, you feel really great because you made your own stock, and it impresses everyone you brag to about it because they think that making homemade stock is really hard. It’s not.
I was going to gift myself with a new stock pot this year, but haven’t yet gotten around to it. Just like how I was going to gift myself with a new set of knives last year. My current one was $10 at a grocery store and my mother gave me hell about buying it because it was so cheaply made. Hey, I was fresh out of college then and was holding down four jobs to support myself – investing$100-400 in a “good” stock pot wasn’t high on my priorities. Now we have a flat-top stove (not induction, just flat-top) and the pot doesn’t work very well because the thin bottom has warped unevenly. If it’s less than 1/3 full, I have to blast it on high and hold it down in order for it to warm up. But if we end up moving to a place that has a gas stove it’ll work fine again. Also, we have a tiny sink and washing a large, heavy stock pot would be a chore. (Shhh…don’t tell Santa…)
Anyway, I used to make my own stocks even when I was living alone. I would save my roasted chicken carcasses (remember, almost one chicken each week), and when I got two or three I would make stock. They were small chickens. Anyway, the method I’ve developed is thus:

my arsenal of dried herbs and spices. yes, the entire top shelf is from Penzeys.
Throw your spices and herbs into the pot first. Usually cookbooks recommend you tie the spices and herbs into cheesecloth as a bouquet garni, but I’ve never bothered to do that. Firstly, I hate using cheesecloth. When I first started cooking seriously, I used to use it to strain my stocks and tie those little bouquet garnis…but cheesecloth is a pain. You have to keep it around and I never wanted to save them to wash them, so it was a big waste. I now use a clean flour sack towel to strain my stocks. More on that below. Secondly, if you use dried spices, they tend to slip out of the cheesecloth. Thirdly, you’re going to have bits of vegetable and chicken floating around anyway, so some free-flowing herbs aren’t going to matter. If you add the herbs and spices in first, and pile everything on top, I’ve reasoned that the rest of the stuff will keep most of the herbs and spices from floating around to the top. It works for me. I usually use the following, but it varies and everyone has their own tastes:
- whole peppercorns. I’ve been using green peppercorns lately, but anything will do for poultry
- several shakes of dried red chili pepper, like the kind you put on pizza. I find it perks up the stock.
- fresh herbs if I have them, or dried. Usually thyme, rosemary, sage. Parsley and dill if I have it, but it’s not necesary if I don’t.
- Bay leaves
- Fresh garlic. Ok, not an herb, but it keeps it from floating to the top.
- Fresh ginger. Just stick a chunk in about the size of a thumb.
- Celery seeds if I don’t have celery
Why no salt? The carcass will already be salty because I use a lot of salt when I roast. Also, it’s usually best to wait to add salt until you’re at least halfway through the cooking process. The liquid will reduce, and if you add it too early, you might end up with a saltier stock than you’d like. Then I add the poultry carcass, including any skin. I broke down the turkey carcass into about eight pieces so they would comfortably fit into the pot. I want everything to be covered by water, and didn’t want drumsticks jutting out of the pot.
Then I add the vegetables, lighter ones on the bottom and heavier ones on top, again to weight everything down. I used the following this time:
- Tomato paste, since tomatoes aren’t in season
- 3 small onions, halved. I sometimes use leeks as well, but not this time.
- 3 medium carrots, halved on a slant
- 2 stalks celery, halved
- 1/2 a rutebega, cut into large hunks. This helps give the stock body.
- Leftover shitake mushroom stalks that I had saved when I had made stuffing

cheap stock pot filled to the brim. note the wire rack holding everything down.
I added a small dash of white wine, which is supposed to help unlock the tomato flavour – I can’t remember details, but I saw something about it on Good Eats. Less is more with wine here, because you can really taste it and you don’t want the wine to overpower all the hard work you put into your stock. You can booze it up later on when you make caramelized onion soup or risotto.
Then I added a lot of water, perhaps 1.5 gallons. Water evaporates during the cooking process; recently I made stock out of a small chicken carcass, using about three cups of water, and ended up with only 1/2 a cup of stock! So this time I filled the pot just about to the top.

collected scum. I ended up removing about 1.5 cups of scum.
I turned the heat to high (since I was using the cheap pot), and waited until it came to a gentle boil, then reduced the heat to a gentle simmer. Because I like a very clear stock, it’s important to keep the temperature low (still cooking, but few bubbles) and I am a determined skimmer. People say that you only have to skim during the first 15-30 minutes, but I skim during the entire cooking process. To skim, I use a large flat spoon to scrape and remove the oil and scum and foam that collects at the top of the pot. It’s important to do this frequently and thoroughly, or the scum will cloud the stock and it will taste muddy or slightly turned or not as pure as if you had skimmed. It might seem like you’re taking out quite a lot of the stock itself when you skim, but that’s one of the reasons why I use so much water in the first place. When you start skimming, you’ll understand why I’ve thought so much about weighing down all the little bits so they don’t float around to the top and get skimmed off with the scum.
It’s up to you as to how long you let a stock simmer. Some do it for hours and hours, but if you’re impatient, about an hour is the minimum for poultry. I let the turkey stock go for three hours, including warm-up time. I tasted the stock a couple of times, and added salt.
The stock will stay hot for a long time even after turning off the heat. I removed the spent vegetables first with a slotted spoon and let them draining and cool in a colander nested in a large mixing bowl for about 30 minutes. I’m not kidding – the pieces are big and they take a long time to cool. If you chop stock vegetables too small, they will disintegrate in your stock and make it cloudy. I did several loads of laundry during this cooking process, so I wasn’t just standing around waiting for them to cool. Why not just dump all the hot stuff straight into the garbage bin? Well, first of all, it still has a lot of moisture. It will steam up your garbage, make everything smell, and the moisture from the steam will encourage mildew to fester in your garbage. Ew. Secondly, it still has a lot of moisture, meaning it still has stock locked up inside of it. When I finally dumped out the used vegetable bits, I had at least a half cup of stock which had drained out the bottom. Then I removed the bones and rest of the stuff. It also took about 30 minutes to cool and drain. When I had removed all the pieces I could, I then lined the colander with a clean flour sack towel and strained the stock through it into a large bowl. I did this three or four times.

bones removed and cooling/draining. note the level of the stock.
I don’t usually use fabric softener and never on towels anymore. When we lived in Rhode Island, we had to share the duplex’s dryer with our landlords, who were kind of but not completely ok with our sharing it with them (it wasn’t us, the thing kept breaking down on them, but they were still trying to baby it along and use it as little as possible to avoid getting a new one). So I used the outside clothes line as much as possible, and especially for towels. I’d finish them for 10-15 minutes in the dryer to make them fluffy. After that experience, I found that I really didn’t miss fabric softener on towels, or a

flour sack towel caught all the little bits leftover
nything else. Since we use fragrance-free, gentle detergent, I don’t worry about using the cotton flour sack towels as strainers, biscuit covers, or paper towel substitutes. If the food stains them, I can always run them through the wash twice (once on hot with towels and again on warm with light colours if necessary) to get them out. I find that using flour sack towels also encourages me to cook more, because I don’t feel as wasteful using a lot of paper towels for everything. They can’t replace everything, as I learned when I tried to run one through the can opener to clean it, and ended up creating holes. It’s a lifestyle choice, but I do strongly advocate the use of flour sack towels, which can be purchase inexpensively online.
So, back to the stock. The flour sack towel caught all of the little bits leftover, like the dried spices and the tomato paste particles. I squeezed out the towel to get

beautiful golden turkey stock to be frozen.
the last of the juices, and admired my handiwork. I was left with about a gallon of clear, beautiful dark golden turkey stock. Why this obsession with a clear stock? I find that when I am sick, I am super sensitive to even the smell of grease or oil and I want to have very clear soups with zero fat in it. I’m not often sick, but it’s good to be prepared. I associate cloudy stocks with unknown contaminates and don’t trust them as much as I would a clear stock.

homemade turkey stock, about to become homemade turkey soup
Usually, I freeze stock in 2-3 cup containers which can easily be used later. Since its winter and I’ll definitely make soup later on, I froze one large container and a small container with the leftover. Turkey stock freezes very well and it relieves me of the pressure of using the stock right away, as I would if I stored it in the fridge. Since my stock is very clear, I feel like it keeps longer than a cloudy stock. Nothing is worse than going through this day-long process of making stock, and find out that your stock tastes rancid or muddy, as has happened to me when I attempted to make stocks out of rock crab carcasses. I made turkey soup right away with the remainder. Note to self: rutabaga is great in stock, but less interesting as a component in turkey soup.
Now, is it economically worth it to make homemade stock, when a can of stock is just $.99? Or those little cubes of bouillon are ~$.25 each? I say yes. The carcass would otherwise be thrown out, and if you keep a stocked fridge the old vegetables would also have been discarded. I have the advantage of the incredibly inexpensive public markets at my disposal, where a 10 lb. bag of carrots or onions is $3-$5, so I’d say yes, even with vegetables a stock is worth the effort and cost. If you don’t have vegetables around, even just making a stock out of a carcass and some salt and pepper is nice. A homemade stock has a greater depth of flavour than a canned stock and it’s really not hard or expensive to make.
Of course, if I don’t have homemade stock around, I do resort to those canned broths and those little bouillon cubes, but my preference is always for my own product.
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