Hurray! For the second time, I didn’t blow the kitchen up.
There is still a little bit of fear in using the pressure canner. When the directions say do this and don’t do that so as not to explode, it instills a bit of hesitancy to use the canner.
I’ve been wanting to make my own chicken stock for a while to put up. Last year I made some chicken and some turkey stock, but froze it instead of canning. Since freezer space is always at a premium, it was time to just step up and can.
Over the past few months I had saved all leftover skin and bones from our Costco whole chickens. All of these went into one pot, a whole new chicken in the other. I wanted to see if there was a difference in taste between the two ways of cooking the stock. To me, there was no difference, both tasted the same. Both tasted delicious.
So delicious in fact, I had the little bit of left over for my dinner.
The homemade stock doesn’t have the salty taste of store bought. There was also a much deeper level of sophistication of flavor, almost like a symphony. A symphony where without just one instrument there would have been a raucous sound, but with the chorus of simple ingredients, the taste buds were in a blissful state. In fact, I almost used a hard earned jar right away.
There was a disgusting part of the equation though. Part of the recipe is cooling the broth overnight in the refrigerator. This is to allow the fat to rise to the surface and congeal. In the morning, that fat has to be skimmed off before heating the broth again to put in the jars.
I’ve eaten and cooked some interesting things, but this has to be in the top five of disgusting things to do. However, and yes there is a however, the fat can be saved to use in frying or adding to other recipes to add some flavor.
Always a silver lining, eh!
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 