(no subject)
I made stew and so can you! Or something. I've been meaning to do this for the past several weekends, and today I did. And I took pictures. So! Have some pictures.
First, to assemble your ingredients!
What do we have here? Two stock pots, two mixing bowls, a pair of tongs, a wooden spoon, onions, carrots, garlic, noodles, fresh rosemary, salt, pepper, a cup of white wine, and a small bowl of calendula flowers. Calendula flowers can be used to add to the color of the soup and to give a bit more nutritional punch; I ended up leaving them out of the finished product, but you could add them in.
The wine in the photo is a Harlequin Chenin Blanc, but I ended up swapping it out for a much less sweet Chenin Blanc - this bottle was late-harvest, and sweeter than I wanted. Note that I know nothing about wine. My solution to knowing whether or not I should use a certain type is more or less to sip it and consider. Given that the wine would be in a simmering solution for a couple of hours, I assume that any alcohol would have evaporated; even if not, who gets drunk on the fractional portion of a half-cup you'd be eating in a bowl of this stew, anyway?
Of course, there is one ingredient missing, and it's an important one.
BIRDFLESH.
Yes. Chicken. LOTS of chicken. That's over 3 pounds, altogether. The important thing about this chicken is that it has the bone in - the bone is what gives the actual flavor and body to stocks.
Om nom nom.
The chicken, rosemary, wine, and garlic go into a pot and are covered with cold water. Onion skins go in for color, and a chopped-in-half onion goes in to impart more flavor to the broth.
This is the last time it's going to look at all pretty until you're done, basically, so enjoy the view.
Bring to a boil. As soon as it starts boiling, turn it down to a simmer - the surface of the water should jitter, but it shouldn't roll. There's a reason you don't want it rolling.
Pretty soon, you'll get frothy white ick developing on the surface of the broth. This is normal and should not be cause for concern. What's concerning is that if you have it at a rolling boil, it'll go back into the stock, and you don't wanna eat that.
So just skim it off and toss it.
Then go bum around on the internet for a while. Or go for a short walk. Or watch a cartoon.
Then come back and skim some more.
Keep this up for a few hours.
Two hours in, your stock will look something like this. This is also normal and should not be cause for concern. I mean, geez, guys, it's a bunch of dismembered animal parts you're boiling the heck out of. You want it to be pretty?
The stock's color should be lookin' pretty sweet, though.
When the chicken meat is ready to come off its bones in shreds - test it with a fork - get a small strainer (I know, I should have shown it with the ingredients) and scoop out everything in the pot. Your stock will look like this. The other stuff... not so appetizing.
I warned you.
The stuff in the left bowl is the stuff you don't want in your soup - skin, bones, the woody parts of the rosemary, joints, tendons, you know. The stuff on the right is everything that was in the stock and is waiting to be sorted through, with its skins and bones and such added to the left bowl.
The meat gets added straight back into the stock.
Sorting this takes a really long time, and is... a bit disgusting. You're forewarned.
Once the sorting is done, or before it's done, or while it's happening if you have more than one person in the kitchen, chop up your carrots and add them in.
And the onions.
Boil the noodles in a separate pot. Boiling them in the stock can make them unpleasantly gummy.
Once that's done add them into the big pot, salt and pepper to taste, and voilá! If you've done this all correctly, at this point clouds should part and the heavens should open and choirs of angels should sing. Or, you know, it'll just taste really good, which is good too.
This is about where you'd stir in the calendula flowers, if you weren't afraid of stirring the pot any more than was absolutely necessary. I mean, damn, but that thing was full.
I filled up five cans with this. Each can generally yields between 4 and 7 meal-sized bowls, depending on how hungry the person dishing it out is. So, I have soup for a good long time, out of this. Possibly I'll be forcing some on my Iowa City friends...
First, to assemble your ingredients!
What do we have here? Two stock pots, two mixing bowls, a pair of tongs, a wooden spoon, onions, carrots, garlic, noodles, fresh rosemary, salt, pepper, a cup of white wine, and a small bowl of calendula flowers. Calendula flowers can be used to add to the color of the soup and to give a bit more nutritional punch; I ended up leaving them out of the finished product, but you could add them in.
The wine in the photo is a Harlequin Chenin Blanc, but I ended up swapping it out for a much less sweet Chenin Blanc - this bottle was late-harvest, and sweeter than I wanted. Note that I know nothing about wine. My solution to knowing whether or not I should use a certain type is more or less to sip it and consider. Given that the wine would be in a simmering solution for a couple of hours, I assume that any alcohol would have evaporated; even if not, who gets drunk on the fractional portion of a half-cup you'd be eating in a bowl of this stew, anyway?
Of course, there is one ingredient missing, and it's an important one.
BIRDFLESH.
Yes. Chicken. LOTS of chicken. That's over 3 pounds, altogether. The important thing about this chicken is that it has the bone in - the bone is what gives the actual flavor and body to stocks.
Om nom nom.
The chicken, rosemary, wine, and garlic go into a pot and are covered with cold water. Onion skins go in for color, and a chopped-in-half onion goes in to impart more flavor to the broth.
This is the last time it's going to look at all pretty until you're done, basically, so enjoy the view.
Bring to a boil. As soon as it starts boiling, turn it down to a simmer - the surface of the water should jitter, but it shouldn't roll. There's a reason you don't want it rolling.
Pretty soon, you'll get frothy white ick developing on the surface of the broth. This is normal and should not be cause for concern. What's concerning is that if you have it at a rolling boil, it'll go back into the stock, and you don't wanna eat that.
So just skim it off and toss it.
Then go bum around on the internet for a while. Or go for a short walk. Or watch a cartoon.
Then come back and skim some more.
Keep this up for a few hours.
Two hours in, your stock will look something like this. This is also normal and should not be cause for concern. I mean, geez, guys, it's a bunch of dismembered animal parts you're boiling the heck out of. You want it to be pretty?
The stock's color should be lookin' pretty sweet, though.
When the chicken meat is ready to come off its bones in shreds - test it with a fork - get a small strainer (I know, I should have shown it with the ingredients) and scoop out everything in the pot. Your stock will look like this. The other stuff... not so appetizing.
I warned you.
The stuff in the left bowl is the stuff you don't want in your soup - skin, bones, the woody parts of the rosemary, joints, tendons, you know. The stuff on the right is everything that was in the stock and is waiting to be sorted through, with its skins and bones and such added to the left bowl.
The meat gets added straight back into the stock.
Sorting this takes a really long time, and is... a bit disgusting. You're forewarned.
Once the sorting is done, or before it's done, or while it's happening if you have more than one person in the kitchen, chop up your carrots and add them in.
And the onions.
Boil the noodles in a separate pot. Boiling them in the stock can make them unpleasantly gummy.
Once that's done add them into the big pot, salt and pepper to taste, and voilá! If you've done this all correctly, at this point clouds should part and the heavens should open and choirs of angels should sing. Or, you know, it'll just taste really good, which is good too.
This is about where you'd stir in the calendula flowers, if you weren't afraid of stirring the pot any more than was absolutely necessary. I mean, damn, but that thing was full.
I filled up five cans with this. Each can generally yields between 4 and 7 meal-sized bowls, depending on how hungry the person dishing it out is. So, I have soup for a good long time, out of this. Possibly I'll be forcing some on my Iowa City friends...