Overnight Chicken Stock
I woke up this morning to the smell of chicken stock.
I stepped out of bed, walked down the hallway, and looped back into the kitchen. A pot sat over a burner turned to very low. In it, thin slices of translucent onion formed a mat on the surface of the liquid. A chicken wing tip poked through the surface. The liquid had dropped about two inches overnight. I placed a chinoise over a bowl and poured the pot's contents through it.
The chicken stock in the bowl was a rich, golden-brown color. Even at room temperature, a shake of the bowl produced a gelatinous jiggle instead of a liquidy splash.
This is my preferred technique for chicken stock now.
The technique came about by accident. I needed chicken stock for a dish the next day, and I only remembered late the night before that I had intended to make some. Having an excellent meal planning app doesn't help you if you forget to look at it.
I set up the chicken stock before going to bed, set the burner to low, and woke up early the next morning. That first batch had reduced down significantly overnight: I ended up with about 2 cups. But the stock was intensely flavored and thick. For the second batch, I planned the overnight steep in advance, re-upped the liquid in the pot before bed, and woke up to perfect stock.
I can't imagine going back to done-in-2-hours stock at this point. My technique may have been an accident, but it's hardly original. Michael Ruhlman, I realized recently, has a post on his blog about turkey stock done in a similar way. He uses the oven; I use the burner. Same difference.
The Technique
I usually start this a couple hours before going to bed so I can adjust the temperature as needed. This usually nets me about one quart of stock, but your mileage may vary.
Assemble your chicken stock the way you normally would. I collect bits and bones from the chicken we get every few weeks in the Soul Food Farms CSA. For a given chicken, I dice one onion and cut one medium carrot and one celery stalk into thick slices. I add the chicken pieces (some weeks, we get feet on our chicken, which is a bonus source of gelatin) and enough water to cover.
I know approximately where I need to set my burner for optimal results, but I keep an eye on it. For normal chicken stock, you want a bubble to appear on the surface every few seconds. For this chicken stock, you want about a 10-second interval. I keep an eye on how fast the liquid is dropping. You want about one quarter of an inch every hour. Just before going to bed, I top up the stock with more cold water.
The next morning, I wake up to heaven.
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