"Julia Altshuler" wrote in message
news:qiQsb.141846$9E1.717742@attbi_s52...
I'm feeling a bit better today, but was surprised yesterday when my
boyfriend came home from the supermarket with the report that he'd asked
for chicken bones and learned that they don't sell them. He asked for
chicken backs or chicken wings with which to make chicken soup and
learned that they didn't have those either. The best he could do was a
package of 4 chicken legs (which cooked into a very thick, gelatinous
broth without much flavor but all the healing properties I could ask
for). Does no one make chicken soup from scratch anymore that bones
aren't available at the supermarket?

If I do find bones at a specialty market, how long can I freeze them for
and, would freezing them have any effect on them later when I went to
use them for soup? Or is it better to freeze the chicken stock? How
long can freeze stock? Finally, is there anything I can do to improve
the flavor? Maybe my tastes are changing, but it seems that we used to
make chicken stock at the Culinary Institute that tasted good. I would
have sworn I used the same method yesterday and ended up with broth that
was bland. What puts the flavor in chicken soup? Is the difference in
the fact that I used bone in drumsticks instead of bones or something
else?

--Lia


The flavor is mostly in the meat - there's very little if any flavor in the
bones themselves. I think that the "bones" people use to make chicken soup
refer to the leftovers from a roast chicken, and the flavor comes primnarily
from the bits of meat that are still attached. I have never seen chicken
bones per se for sale, although some stores carry backs and necks for this
purpose. You can make a wonderful stock from legs - I do it regularly when
they are on sale at 19 cents a pound. Use a cleaver to chop them into 1"
pieces and then proceed as usual. Simmer for at least 2 hours. If your stock
was tasteless I suspect you used too much water or perhaps had a batch of
bland chicken!


--
Peter Aitken

Remove the crap from my email address before using.