Making Stock

Stock is the flavorful liquid created from cooking the bones of an animal with aromatic herbs and vegetables in water. It's a basic ingredient in many other dishes, such as soups, stews and sauces.

Here, I'm making a turkey stock with the carcass I deboned in the earlier post, as well as photo from my Thanksgiving stock for the western style example. If I were making a chicken stock, I'd want two carcasses fro the amount of vegetables in these examples.
 

For stocks for European and American cooking the ingredients are usually:

Bones from 1 turkey carcass

2 large onion, peeled and cut in half or quarters

3-4 carrots, washed, trimmed and cut in chunks. If really thick perhaps cut them in half lengthwise too.

4 ribs celery

sprigs of thyme

2-3 bay leaves

10 pepper corns
1/2 cup white wine (optional)

Put all this in a pot. Cover with cold water. heat slowly to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 4 hours. Strain out the solids. Chill, remove the fat when chilled. Save the fat, it's useful to cook with where you want some turkey flavor, such as in gravy. Keep the stock refrigerated and the fat too.

The wine is helpful particularly if you're working with a cooked carcass and nice with a raw carcass too.

For Chinese stocks, they change up the aromatics so the ingredients are:

Bones from 1 turkey carcass

2 large onion, peeled and cut in half or quarters

3-4 carrots, washed, trimmed and cut in chunks. If really thick perhaps cut them in half lengthwise too.

4 ribs celery

3-4 cloves garlic, crushed

4 star anise

1 inch chunk of ginger, cut in round slices, like a coin

10 pepper corns
1/2 cup ShaoHsing wine (otpional)

Put all this in a pot. Cover with cold water. heat slowly to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 4 hours. Strain out the solids. Chill, remove the fat when chilled. Save the fat, it's useful to cook with where you want some turkey flavor, such as in gravy. Keep the stock refrigerated and the fat too.