Chicken – Should you strip meat off bones before putting them in a stock

chickenstock

I made my first chicken stock last week and bought some winglets from my local butcher. The winglets had a lot of meat on them and I wasn't sure whether to leave it on or not. The stock didn't come out so great so I'm wondering if it would help to strip the meat off the winglets.

This is the process I used to create the stock – I was following a recipe for a brown chicken stock:

In a chefs pan

  • Browned chicken (winglets were sliced down to the bone – meat still on though)
  • Added onions, garlic, mushrooms, bay leaves, thyme and peppercorns and softened
  • Drained chicken fat
  • Added everything into large saucepan with 2 litres cold water
  • Brought to boil
  • Skimmed scum off surface (never quite managed this, even after half an hour)
  • Reduced for 1:30 with several attempts to skim more scum off

Best Answer

Meat can add a lot of good flavor to a stock, but it can cause a lot of "scum" to form, so you have to be more diligent in your skimming, otherwise you get cloudiness. The bigger problem with winglets is that they're mostly skin, which equals fat, which is generally not a good thing for stock. Again, though, there's a way to fix it: refrigerate the stock, then remove the fat that solidifies on top.

Other than that, there are the usual bits of advice-

  • Add a whole onion, skin on - the skin provides good color
  • Add flavorful vegetables: carrots and carrot-shaped root veggies, celery stalks
  • Cook low and slow
  • Do add spices (whole peppercorns, whole allspice), but don't go overboard with them
  • When scum starts to form, skim it off with a strainer or a spoon, whichever works better for you
  • Did I mention cooking low and slow?
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