Hello! My name is Shannon Overmiller, the Chef at The Majestic in Old Town Alexandria.

Today, I’ll be demonstrating roasted chicken and part of the components to make the sauce for the roasted chicken is chicken stock. We’re going to go over simple basic method for chicken stock with you.

What you want to do is you have the bones of a chicken either from your precut off meat or I use whole chickens as well for my chicken stock. You simply want to break the chicken down into pieces. Bones are especially what you want for a stock but for demonstration purposes I’m going to use half a chicken.

What you want to do very simply is put your chickens into a pot. You want to cover the chicken with very cold water. You can even add ice into it. And when you start the chicken stock, when you put the ice in it, once it comes to a boil it braises and it brings out all the impurities in the chicken stock. When it reaches a boil, you want to reduce it back down to a simmer and simmer chicken stock for four hours.

At this stage you want to add your ice and as you can see, you already start to see the clouds and the oil starting to come up to the top, and once this comes to a boil, the fats will come out, and that’s how you get a nice, clean stock is to take that off.

So, when this comes to a boil, and you’ve removed all the skin, all the fats and impurities, and the method for doing so is with a ladle. When skimming, you always take the circular motion which separates your fats from your actual broth. And you want to remove any oil bubbles, any oils, deposits that you have. You can see in the middle, it’s clear and on the ends here, it’s got the grease and that’s what we want to take away. Of course, when it comes to a full boil you’ll see this more clearly but this is the method on how you skim something. You separate out your fat and this is all pure stock in the middle. On the sides is your fat. Put into a safe container to discard later.

So, once this comes to a boil, this is where the point where you add your vegetables. For any stock, you always use a mirepoix which is a trinity of vegetables, two parts onion, one part carrot to one part celery. Dice these up, chop them up roughly for stock is fine. I’ve already previously washed and cut my celery. So we’ll save one part celery, two parts onion.

To demonstrate quickly on how to cut an onion, you start flat side down after being peeled. Go straight down in this manner, root side which would be this side as where the root is, holding away from you. Taking you knife, handing grip, slice down to the desired pieces. Then you turn the knife, and you turn the onion from the root side, the side you’re not cutting into is not the root side. The root side is what holds the onion together. Using your knife and this is the easiest way to dice an onion.

Now you have your uniform pieces which I’ve done earlier. We’ve done one part celery, two parts onion to one part carrot. I’d like to take a touch of salt, not much because you can’t take salt out of stock but I do believe it enhances the flavor and here’s another layer which I spoke of earlier of cooking. Black pepper, pepper corns are fine. A little fresh thyme, herbs on stem of your choice, oregano, bay leaf, garlic, and sage.

So, now you’ve flavored your chicken stock, all these simmers. Once it’s up to a boil, you reduce the fat or skim the fat and the impurities, then you add your vegetables, then you reduce down to a simmer. And let it simmer for approximately four hours especially if using raw chicken. You must let it simmer for at least 45 minutes, it comes to a boil, it’s safe, but I like the flavor to enhance and the gelatin through this out of the bones, which gives you a hearty stock. And that is chicken stock.