A few days ago we had some chicken legs (thighs and drumsticks), but had decided to take the meat off the bones to stir fry – so we were left with the bones and various scraps plus the skin. I’m trying to be a bit more conscientious about not wasting food, so decided I should make something with these scraps. I found a recipe for brown chicken stock in delicious magazine and decided I’d do a variation on that. To be honest I didn’t follow the recipe that closely – it more just inspired me …

We’d be blanching some broccoli and green beans to freeze, so I reserved the water from that to use to make the stock.

I put the chicken scraps in a roasting pan and cooked them on 180-200C for about half an hour.

While that was happening, I chopped some carrot and onion, and softened that in some oil for 20 minutes or so.

Once the vegetables were soft and the chicken brown I added the chicken to the veg, and deglazed the roasting pan with some sherry and put that in as well. I then added the broccoli cooking water and a little more cold water (probably about 2 litres altogether, but that’s a bit of a guess), a bay leaf and a little bit of rosemary that I had going dry and then brought it all up to a simmer and left it to reduce for several hours – at least 3, possibly 4 hours.

It reduced by about two thirds it’s original volume – it produced around 600ml stock after I’d strained it.

I strained the stock through a sieve and then through the sieve with a little bit of muslin in the bottom (which I’d rescued from a supermarket bought bouquet garni which I’d used to make soup previously.)

The final result was a cloudy brown stock that doesn’t look that great but definitely has the right flavour. I’ll be using it to make something later in the week …