My chicken broth always smells good but...

[momof5boys]

trying using 'Better than Bouillon' (in a 227g jar) - I'll never go back to soup packages and bouillon cubes again!

[lecale]

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[momof5boys]

What a great idea!!!

I second that, great flavour booster. (This stuff seems expensive at around $5.99-6.99, but one jar equals 42 cups (10 liters))

dh seasons our turkey with this stuff: loosen and lift the skin of the turkey and rub chicken Better than Bouillion all over the meat underneath. Makes even utility turkey taste amazing.

[momof5boys]

Some general tips:

- don't cook the vegetables in the stock for hours. Add them in only in the last hour or the flavour gets muddy and miserable. Discard/eat the vegetables you have used to flavour the stock and use fresh new vegetables to make the soup. To intensify sweet/savory vegetable flavours, add 1 tablespoon tomato paste per 3 cups stock at the end. Don't worry, it's not enough to turn this into tomato soup!

- don't use loads of water or high heat. Don't go over 3 cups of water per 1 lb meat or bones or you have too much water. Top up with cold water to the same level as the mixture simmers. You should NOT be losing a lot of water or you have the heat on too high. I use 3 out of 10 on my stove dial, uncovered. You want to see a little steam, but no bubbles. Meat cooked this way will also be less tough.

- add some herbs/seasonings and keep the fat. The most common seasonings would be bay leaf, parsley, thyme, peppercorns, allspice. Note a lot of the flavour compounds in herbs will dissolve into fat but not water. If you skim off all the fat you will be losing the herb/spice flavour that has been concentrated into it. If you chill the stock to remove the fat, use the fat to cook your onions, celery, spices when you start making your soup instead of using something else. You'll have concentrated chicken flavour and the chicken fat is relatively low in saturated fat so you don't have to feel guilty the way you do with e.g., bacon fat. So don't throw it out, you can use it in place of butter/marg/oil for pan frying, making powdered gravy mix better, dressing noodles simply, etc.

- boost the colour with a little bit of turmeric...lol check your soup cans, this is just what the manufacturers do

- use short cooking times for meat and long cooking times for bones. If you are poaching chicken meat, you want to keep it at 45 mins - under 1.5 hours like Natalka does (thighs are more forgiving than breast). If you are using a carcass, you can simmer that sucker for 8 hours or more.

- Bones have more flavour that you'd think, and you can increase the flavour by exposing the marrow. Use a pair of pruning shears to cut the knobby ends off of the big bones, and put everything in the stock. Cut the keel (breastbone) too as there is marrow in it as well. Roasted bones off a roast chicken also have a better flavour than plain because they have already been seasoned...but they are not so salty that you can't concentrate the stock later.

- skimming is more important when using bones. Bones contain gelatin and this will give the stock a thick slightly slimy mouthfeel. If you are using the stock to make gravy, this is perfect: don't skim, keep the fat and gelatin in, and you will have the silkiest gravy imaginable. But for soup, you do not want this mouthfeel so you skim the gelatin as it froths up or forms a skin on your stock. The gelatin is found in the bones and skin, so it is not an issue when you are using breasts and thighs. You can also reduce the gelatin from bones by beating in egg whites at the end, letting them cook and straining them out.

- Don't salt the stock until you are ready to make it into soup (unless you are using meat, not bones). This gives you the option of reducing and concentrating the stock without worries about making it too salty. Concentrate the flavour by straining the stock and reducing it by about 25% (e.g., 8 cups --> 6 cups) before making your soup. And as mentioned instead of salt consider using chicken bouillon to season the soup.

Next time you get a take out chicken from the grocery store, try making stock with the picked over bones. This is where you get something for nothing (as normally the bones are garbage, but they make spectacular stock.) Reserve the left over meat and add it at the soup making stage. In a classic chunky celery, onion, carrot, bay, thyme, parsley soup, I personally love swede (rutabaga, yellow turnip, people never agree on the name of those things!)

dh likes to roast a turkey every month from September to May, so all through the cold months of the year I am making turkey stock. In the end I have come to add no salt, herbs, spices, vegetables. It's neutral-meaty, and you can use it to season up and make the gravy for a shepherd's pie or add coconut milk and go Thai. The more you add at the stock stage, the more committed you are to making noodle soup.

lecale...I'm making turkey soup stock today in my slow cooker, using four turkey necks. I added a large bay leaf and 1/4 tsp pepper. What else would you recommend? I was considering throwing in an onion but now am not so sure.

[lecale]

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[momof5boys]

Thanks SOOO much for replying....off to add some veggies now

[nicolthepickle]

Like a lot of other people have said. You need salt honey.