Taking Stock
Time to make soup, a walk through the Village in snow, a summer cocktail for winter, book and movie and TV recs, and more ...
I’ve long lamented the fact that most people think that making stock is an elaborate project. I suppose it can be—if you set out to make a gallon of brown veal stock (maybe one of the great miracles of the kitchen). But not for four cups of chicken stock from the carcass of roasted (or rotisserie) chicken.
As we dig out from under two feet of snow, I thought I’d put stock-making on the agenda, especially as a friend we were traveling with recently didn’t know of my genius, yes genius, method for easy overnight stock. The Promiscuous Reader will back me up on this one.
If you’re a longtime reader of my work, you’re well aware of the method, but for those who aren’t, those who don’t know how easy great chicken stock is, what better season to give it a whirl?
Here’s the easiest way to do it …
Tear the chicken parts apart at the joints so they fit compactly in the pot. Include any meat you’re not planning to eat. (The more meat, the more flavor.) Quarter an onion (no need to peel it unless it’s dirty; I usually take the root off and the sticker) and add it to the pot with a carrot or two and a bay leaf. Cover it with water. Put it uncovered in a 200˚F oven before you go to bed. Wake to the smell of glorious chicken stock. Strain. (If you’re nervous about leaving the oven on while you sleep, do it the next morning!)
Here’s the way I do it …
It adds an extra step, but I think it’s worth it. I cover just the bones with water and put the pot in the oven. The next day I discard the bones, add the carrot, onion, and bay leaf and simmer gently for 45-60 mins.
Here’s the way Ann does it …
Ann adds a leek to hers. She’s right. It makes a difference. If you remember to pick up a leek.
Stock tips …
As I wrote in my James-Beard-Award-Winning, now-out-of-print book, Ruhlman’s Twenty, water is one of the most overlooked powerhouse ingredients in the kitchen. We use it in five different ways: We cook food in it (eggs, pasta, beans), we use it to mediate heat in the form of a water bath (custards), we use it to stop the cooking (ice bath), we use it to freeze liquids (ice cream), and, perhaps most important of all, we use it to extract flavor and protein from foods.
The best example of that last use is stock. Here is my basic stock know-how:
Water pulls out the flavor from the chicken meat.
Water extracts the flavors and sugars from the onion, carrot, and bay leaf.
Water turns the protein collagen—which bones, cartilage, and skin are made of—into gelatin, which makes the liquid nutritious and gives it body.
It is possible to overcook stock. Water will eventually begin to pull larger fragments of bone and cartilage from the carcass and disintegrate the vegetables. The result is less stock not only from reduction, but also because those fragments absorb the valuable stock and get strained out, carrying the stock with them. (This is why I add the vegetables at the end, and only cook them for 45 minutes.)
Try not to boil your stock. It will be clearer and cleaner tasting because the boiling emulsifies fat and other impurities into the stock. That’s why the 200˚F oven is the perfect stock-making device.
That said, you can make a perfectly good chicken stock in an hour by boiling it. This method will give you a good broth for egg drop soup, perhaps the simplest and most nutritious meal there is.
When you know how stock works, you can better understand how to make an excellent sauce for your roasted chicken—right there in the pan. Add any bits from the chicken you won’t eat (wing tips, pope’s nose, skin stuck to the pan) to the pan along with thinly sliced onion and carrot shaved with a peeler to the pan. Deglaze with water, and cook until the water has cooked off. Deglaze two more times. You’re making a quick stock right in the pan. Thicken with Wondra or beurre manié for a lovely jus.
Now, what to do with your delicious, no-fuss stock …
It’s well known that if you have good chicken stock on hand, you have a meal. If you’ve saved bits from the roasted chicken, put it back in the broth with some celery and carrot and egg noodles for classic chicken noodle soup. Or instead of noodles, add fried tortilla, corn, avocado, cilantro, and lime, for corn tortilla soup.
Stream egg into it for egg drop soup. Or use the eggs a different way: make Japanese chawanmushi or Greek avgolemono.
Or simply buy some tortellini and cook them in the broth for tortellini en brodo. Or cook white beans in it, finish with grated Reggiano and olive oil or crumbled bacon.
Or add escarole and sausage for a, yep, escarole and sausage soup. Serve with a great baguette and good butter.
Here’s one of our favorites …
Nothing beats Jean-Georges’s Thai Curry Soup. Warning though: you’ll need to find galangal, Makrut lime leaves, and lemongrass. If you live where you can pick these up, this soup is unbeatable. Here’s the recipe:
For us it means a subway down to Chinatown, to Bangkok Center Grocery on Mosco St. where we can also find really good fresh mushrooms as well. And heck, we’re down here, let’s get a bite at Wo Hop!
I get carried away. Roast a chicken for dinner this weekend, stuff the bones into a pot and make stock while you’re cleaning up. It’s easy!
Snowtime in New York …
What a glorious New York day we had last Sunday, lying in bed till noon, the bed covered with sections of the actual New York Times. Talking, doing puzzles. A bagel and some scrambled eggs with grated gruyere. A matinee at the Minetta Lane Theater called The Disappear, a delightful marital farce about artists and their egos starring Hamish Linklater, Tony-Award-winner Miriam Silverman, and the well-known character actor Dylan Baker. The snow was just beginning when we left the theater and walked up Minetta Lane to Macdougal where Minetta Tavern sits on the corner across from Cafe Wha.
The restaurant was packed and steamy on this cold night. We enjoyed our cocktails and conversation about the play so much we had a second before moving on to grilled Island Creek Oysters, enormous bones filled with marrow to spread on grilled bread, and the tavern’s Black Label burger, arguably the best burger in New York City.
After spotting the Grand Marnier soufflé for two being served at the table across from us, Ann immediately put our order in for a rare desert for us. Our host, Victoria, was uncommonly gracious. Hamish Linklater, from the play, arrived not long after we did so we were able to tell him how much we loved the show. A perfect early dinner on a wintery Sunday night.
When we left, the snow had begun in earnest.
Fashionista Ann on leaving the Minetta Tavern.
And we had a lovely walk home through the snowy streets of Greenwich Village, feeling lucky on so many fronts. We arrived home from San Miguel, Mexico, a week earlier; today cartels were burning up resort cities and people of San Miguel were ordered to shelter in place. Our car was not on the street and so would not be buried in the snow. A tree fell on our neighbor’s car, smashing its windshield. Mayor Mamdani called an actual snow day for New York City schools. And we had plenty of food for the next day, a hearty bolognese for dinner planned and so we didn’t have to leave the apartment all day.
I posted an essay from The Times last week on the glory of snow days. The writer calls snow our most reliable time machines. It sure felt that way as we walked up Bleecker Street, past Grove and Christopher and Charles and Perry and Bank Streets, black treetrunks supporting pure white branches. Stoops, benches, window sills filling with soft wet snow.
We woke to the sound of shovels scraping across our sidewalk and cross country skiers heading east along West 12th Street.
What we’re drinking …
We’re back to our routine, and routine means a bourbon Manhattan for Ann and a 6:1 Martini for me come evening. But we had our dear friend Laura for cocktails and I knew she preferred tequila and mezcal. I could make her a tequila Manhattan, sometimes called The Distrito Federal, or a tequila Negroni—both outstanding cocktails. The former typically uses an aged tequila (reposado or anjeo, the latter a blanco). But she wanted something lighter and more refreshing. That would be a Mezcal Rickey. Even though it’s a great hot weather cocktail, the heavy shot of lime juice with no sweetener feels bracing in winter, too. I don’t usually have tequila on hand but that works great here as well.
Tequila/Mezcal Rickey
2 ounces blanco tequila or mezcal
1 ounce lime juice (or juice from half a good lime)
4 ounces seltzer water
1 lime wedge
Combine the tequila and lime juice in a highball glass, fill it with ice, add the seltzer as desired, and garnish with a lime wedge.
What we’re watching …
A lot of plays as it happens. The aforementioned The Disappear. An outstanding play called Data, a four-person play about a data programmer, AI and immigration—a fascinating moral-dilemma play written by a former Silicone Valley worker.
We were eager to see The Elevator Repair Company’s rendition of Joyce’s Ulysses, because we loved loved loved their play Gatz (which I wrote about here). Let’s just say that we are now officially done with Ulysses—never have to think about it again, or wring our hands for never having finished the novel. Done and done.
You Got Older at our little Cherry Lane theater is a lovely quiet play about a woman at loose ends who returns to take care of her ailing father. And at our favorite company, New York Theater Workshop, we saw Our Joy Is Heavy, a memoir-musical by Abigail and Shaun Bengson, whose One Hundred Days we loved so much we bought more tickets immediately after seeing it the first times (see concluding video.)
We did catch the opening episode of How To Get To Heaven From Belfast, about three 30-something women friends investigating the death of a fourth friend; it has a kind of Bad Sisters vibe but with not enough there there. Instead, we moved on to the second season of Hijack, starring the remarkable Idris Elba. In season one, he negotiates with hijackers on a plane. The action in this one takes place in the German subway system—it’s a nailbiter, but whose side is Elba on?
We were able to catch one movie, one of the best foreign film Oscar nominees, Sirat, about a father and young son who travel to a rave in the mountains of Morocco looking for his daughter, the boy’s sister. The opening rave turns into a very intense road story as the father and son travel with a band of five ravers (played by the misfit ravers themselves, two of them missing limbs). Wild, dangerous, propulsive, shocking—we left the theater thinking what the hell was that? View at your own risk (I recommend it over any of the other nominees).
What we’re reading …
In the last newsletter, I recommended Havoc by Christopher Bollen, a psychological thriller about an old American widow in a luxury hotel in Egypt during the pandemic. The week after I finished it we traveled to the San Miguel writers’ conference, where I bowed out of a faculty reading. Ann surprised me with a text that said she and Chris Bollen were both reading together. He read, of course, from Havoc.
The following week, a day after our return, Ann and I went to Brooklyn Heights to Books Are Magic to hear our friend Chris Castellani talking about his new novel, Last Seen. We arrived minutes late and Ann grabbed the last seat, copy of the new book in her lap. She caught my attention and pointed to one of the blurbs on the back of Chris’s book. It was by Chris Bollen. Then she pointed to the head of a guy five rows up. We said hello again to Mr. Bollen as he headed out.
Chris asked Ann, “Am I going to wake up tomorrow and find you in my bathroom?”
Now, over to The Promiscuous Reader for this weeks recommendations:
I just loved Lucy Caldwell’s Three Days about a family in Belfast during the Blitz in WWII. It was so destroyed that people said, “My God, Belfast is finished.” Caldwell tells the story through multiple points of view that build like a chorus of voices to a gorgeous crescendo. Cannot wait to read her other books.
I started The Red House by Mary Morris before we left on our long Mexico trip. It’s a gloriously big novel so I had to leave it behind in order to fit three short ones in my carry on. Happily, I’m home and able to return to the book and Italy, where Laura has gone to try and find the mother who abandoned the family thirty years ago. Morris is such a masterful writer as she moves us from present to past, from Naples to Turin, from mystery to family saga.
Thank you, Ann. (Fans of Ann Hood—read her latest essay on Oldster Magazine about the meaning and implications of thwacking your hair off and growing it out.)
Links we’ve loved …
This has long bugged me. Why, why do people back their cars into parking spots. When I ask people why, they usually say, “It’s easier to pull out.” To which I think, well, not that much easier. You know what’s hard? Backing your car into a narrow space—two or three times harder and more time consuming than backing it out. I’m glad this Times reporter shares my bafflement.
Ann, who reads a lot of travel pieces (no surprise) found this interesting story from the BBC on the Grimm Fairy Tale route, which begins in Hanau, the city where the brothers were born in 1875 and 1876. (I’d forgotten how truly dark their stories were at the beginning—filled with torture, mutilation, incest. They later sanitized the stories, turning evil mothers into stepmothers and the like; in the original Cindarella, the wicked sisters cut off their toes in order to fit into slippers that fill up with blood; in the end their eyes are plucked out by crows. Hey Mr. Disney, why did you make that edit?)
CNTraveler takes you to seven wonders of the world you can actually visit.
And Southern Living has an interesting fact about the most stolen item in hotel rooms.
Speaking of Wo Hop, their lunar new year t-shirts have become collector items.
And last, though the Olympics are over, it’s never too late to learn where the 40-pound curling stones are made—in a single place in Scotland using granite from a volcanic island in the Firth of Clyde.
And finally …
I’m so enamored with the minstrel Bengsons, I went back to look at some of their songs from One Hundred Days in preparation for the show last night. Here’s a good example of their work.
That’s it for this week! I’ll be back next weekend with a Below 14th Street letter for paid subscribers with reviews of three restaurants in lower Manhattan. All comments are welcome. Please hit the heart button—it makes us glad. Have a great weekend and a better week after that!
—Michael
I once attended a cooking demonstration/lecture by the great Paul Prudhomme and he said something that fundamentally changed my cooking and the use of water as an ingredient. He said that the only purpose of water (again, as an ingredient, not as a coolant or cooking medium) was to dilute foods. He said that making stock was little more that “diluting” the collagen, sugars, proteins, etc. and converting them to a more useful form. In bread, water helps “dilute” the gluten and make the flour into something accessible and useful.
His point was that water is very useful, but quite often, when a recipe calls for adding water, it makes sense to instead add something with more flavor, like chicken stock. He said that this wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate for all recipes requiring water (maybe you don’t want to add chicken stock to your sourdough recipe), but I think his point is still excellent. As a result, whenever I cook, say, sopa de fideo or arroz con pollo, I use stock that I try to make sure is always available in my kitchen.
Also, I’ve been a longtime reader of your work and have long followed your technique for overnight oven stock. But we have so many rotisserie chicken carcasses around here (my wife loves having a chicken in the fridge for easy weeknight dinners), I’ve taken to making stock in the pressure cooker. It helps with extraction, but doesn’t boil, so it reduces cloudiness in the finished product and it is much faster. I still do the overnight stock, but this method is a useful adjunct.
Finally, is there a fundamental difference between a Tequila Rickey and a Ranch Water?
I read Havoc this week, and was wondering where I’d heard about it…apparently from you. Not my typical fare…I’d just finished Allegra Goodman’s new book. I found Havoc creepy but could not put it down. And then that ending! After I finished it I started reading a book whose name escapes me, but decided I couldn’t read another book with weird characters. Meant to say I especially loved today’s letter and the beautiful pics of snowy New York. I’m 40 miles or so east of Providence and we had 2.5 feet of snow. You must have heard how much snow RI had!