This is a basic recipe for brown stock, using bones and meat from just about any seafood, game, poultry or livestock. Click here for a detailed treatise on stock.
Stock always includes some vegetables. If they have been in your fridge a while and are a little more wilty than you want to serve on a salad, they’re typically still fine for stock – so long as they aren’t actually starting to degrade. But meat and bone should be in excellent shape. Making stock is not an opportunity to extend the life of waning meat.
Here is how your finished stock should look: do the wiggle!
For good body, joints and marrow bones are best. Saw them into 2″ pieces or crack them using a clean hammer on a clean, hard surface (wear eye protection). Ribs are good too — just trim the meat from between them and set aside with the meat trimmings. If buying bones from the butcher, ask them to cut them to 2″ sections.
Cooked bones or carcasses are fine so long as they weren’t cooked with spices that might clash with how you plan to use the stock.
For fish stock use only white-fleshed non-oily fish. Use bones, heads, skin, and fins — but remove gills. Give the skin a good rinse and wipe, but don’t worry about scales. On large fish split the heads. The shells of shrimp, lobster, crab and crawdads make astonishingly good seafood stock.
Adding collagen-rich items like calves foot or chicken feet gives a richer texture, what is called “mouth-feel”, to the stock. Wild turkey feet, pheasant feet or duck/goose feet also work great. Just blanch, chill, peel, and pop off the nails and spurs first. It’s easy, but google for “how to peel chicken feet” in YouTube.com if you’re not confident. Adjust the blanching time up for feet larger than chicken feet (e.g. turkey) or down for smaller (e.g. pheasant).
Achilles tendon from deer (or beef) is also excellent — but only use if clean. They can get grungy if used to drag or hang the carcass. If you are short on connective tissue or are using already cooked bones consider adding powdered unflavored gelatin to improve body.
Stock always includes some vegetables. If they have been in your fridge a while and are a little more wilty than you want to serve on a salad, they’re typically still fine for stock – so long as they aren’t actually starting to degrade. But meat and bone should be in excellent shape. Making stock is not an opportunity to extend the life of waning meat.
Here is how your finished stock should look: do the wiggle!
For good body, joints and marrow bones are best. Saw them into 2″ pieces or crack them using a clean hammer on a clean, hard surface (wear eye protection). Ribs are good too — just trim the meat from between them and set aside with the meat trimmings. If buying bones from the butcher, ask them to cut them to 2″ sections.
Cooked bones or carcasses are fine so long as they weren’t cooked with spices that might clash with how you plan to use the stock.
For fish stock use only white-fleshed non-oily fish. Use bones, heads, skin, and fins — but remove gills. Give the skin a good rinse and wipe, but don’t worry about scales. On large fish split the heads. The shells of shrimp, lobster, crab and crawdads make astonishingly good seafood stock.
Adding collagen-rich items like calves foot or chicken feet gives a richer texture, what is called “mouth-feel”, to the stock. Wild turkey feet, pheasant feet or duck/goose feet also work great. Just blanch, chill, peel, and pop off the nails and spurs first. It’s easy, but google for “how to peel chicken feet” in YouTube.com if you’re not confident. Adjust the blanching time up for feet larger than chicken feet (e.g. turkey) or down for smaller (e.g. pheasant).
Achilles tendon from deer (or beef) is also excellent — but only use if clean. They can get grungy if used to drag or hang the carcass. If you are short on connective tissue or are using already cooked bones consider adding powdered unflavored gelatin to improve body.
This recipe sticks to the following ratios:
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CAUTION: Bones spoil quickly and rather spectacularly. Unless used right away when fresh, they should be processed, packaged and frozen with even more care than fresh meat.
Consider preparing an extra 50% of the mirepoix, diced and set aside (not roasted along with the main batch). Add them to the stock about half an hour before the end of the cook. These contribute a nice fresh note.
If making chicken stock, check the detailed notes at the end.
The recipe size is limited by either 1) the amount of bones you have available, or 2) the size of your biggest pot. With 7lbs of bones the default recipe just fits in a 12 quart pot. Adjust the amount of bones in the field below, watching the "Minimum pot size" field in the "Liquid and Pot Size" ingredient section, to be sure your pot is big enough.
Consider preparing an extra 50% of the mirepoix, diced and set aside (not roasted along with the main batch). Add them to the stock about half an hour before the end of the cook. These contribute a nice fresh note.
If making chicken stock, check the detailed notes at the end.
The recipe size is limited by either 1) the amount of bones you have available, or 2) the size of your biggest pot. With 7lbs of bones the default recipe just fits in a 12 quart pot. Adjust the amount of bones in the field below, watching the "Minimum pot size" field in the "Liquid and Pot Size" ingredient section, to be sure your pot is big enough.
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lbs Bones
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Ingredients
To be roasted
- 7 lbs bones Joints and marrow bones are best. Either cracked, or cut into 2" pieces.
- 2 lbs meat — Trimmings, shanks, etc. The more connective tissue the better.
- 2 cups yellow onion (part #1 of mirepoix) — rough chopped, skin on. Can substitute leeks. By weight, roughly 150g per cup.
- 1 cup celery (part #2 of mirepoix) — rough chopped, leaves are fine. By weight, roughly 128g per cup.
- 1 cup carrots (part #3 of mirepoix) — scrubbed but unpeeled, rough chopped. By weight, roughly 128g per cup.
- 1 lb mushrooms — *skip this for fish or poultry
- 6 oz tomato paste — *skip this for fish or poultry
- .5 cup olive oil — Approximate. Enough to brush roasting bones and mirepoix.
Liquid and Pot Size
- 6 quarts cold water — Approximate. At least enough to cover the solids but not much more than that.
- 2 cups wine — dry red (e.g. Cabernet) for bones from red meats, dry white (e.g. Sauvignon Blanc) for poultry or fish. Skip the good stuff, 2 Buck Chuck is fine.
- 12 quarts Minimum pot size
Starting ingredients
- 1 optional calves foot or trotter (pigs foot) to add body — for beef, pork or venison stock
- 7 optional chicken or turkey feet to add body — for poultry or fish stock
- 4 Tbsp whole black pepper corns
- 5 cloves garlic — skin on, lightly smashed
- 1 tsp dried thyme — Triple if fresh, stripped off the stems.
- 5 bay leaves
- 1 bunch Flat-leaf Italian parsley. Not curly. — Slice the main stems away and add to pot. Reserve the leaves to be added later.
- 1 bunch Radish Greens — optional, but quite good
Optional ingredient, added ~ half an hour before end of cook (adds a bright, fresh note).
- 1 cup diced mirepoix (2/1/1 ratio of onion/carrot/celery) — Diced, not rough-chopped. Add to pot, gently submerge (try not to disturb the pot much).
Optional ingredient, added ~ 10 minutes before end of cook.
- Reserved Parsley (The leaves you already reserved above) — Add to pot, gently submerge.
Ingredients
To be roasted
Liquid and Pot Size
Starting ingredients
Optional ingredient, added ~ half an hour before end of cook (adds a bright, fresh note).
Optional ingredient, added ~ 10 minutes before end of cook.
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Instructions
Roasting Bones, meat & veggies:
- Trim meat/fat/whatever from bones to expose bone surface (add trimmings to meat pile). If the marrow bones are not cut into sections, find a safe and clean way to crack them with a hammer (wear eye protection!). The goal is not to make them smaller, but rather to give the liquid access to the bone marrow.
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Spread bones on a rack or grate in one or two roasting pans with enough space so they all brown. Brush with olive oil. Roast uncovered 40-60 minutes, turning once or twice.
If making a very large batch, depending on your the number of roasting pans you have and the size of your oven, you may need to do the roasting in more than one batch.
No matter how wholesome, venison bones can sometimes smell slightly unpleasant at the beginning of the roast. It does not indicate a problem, and it goes away quickly. - While the bones are roasting, add a little olive oil to the mirepoix, meat scraps and optional mushrooms. Mix/toss.
- After an hour, if making stock OTHER than chicken or seafood, brush bones with tomato paste. Use it all up.
- Add the oiled meat scraps, mushrooms and mirepox to the oven — using another pan if need be.
- Roast 30 more minutes, watching the bones carefully — you want then browned, but NOT blackened. Remove from oven and let cool a few minutes.
- Every time you empty a roasting pan deglaze it with wine and a wooden spoon, adding the mix to the pot. There is GREAT flavor there.
If re-using the pan for a 2nd round of roasting ingredients, between batches clean it well enough that no residual glaze remains - or it can blacken and add a nasty taste that may ruin your whole batch. IF USING PANS WITH AN ALUMINUM SURFACE, deglaze with water instead of wine. Using acidic liquid to deglaze an aluminum surface can produce an unpleasant metallic flavor.
Main Process
- Add the roasted meat & veggies to the pot, along with all other ingredients EXCEPT the parsley tops and the optional extra mirepoix.
- Add cold water to cover the ingredients, cover with a lid, then bring to a very slow simmer, around 190°F. You can use medium to heat to get it there, but watch carefully and do not let it come to a full rolling boil. And no stirring — ever!
- Cook 6-24 hours for poultry, 1-2 hours for seafood. For venison or beef bones 12-48 hours (I favor 36 hours). If leaving unattended overnight, for safety you should opt for an alternative cooking method (see notes below)
- Early in the simmering process, stuff sometimes floats to the top. Many recipes call it "scum" or "impurities" - and encourage you to skim it off. But some say don't bother. I never bother and it doesn't seem to hurt anything. Anecdotal evidence suggests fish stock might be an exception.
- Optional oven finish:I'd only do this with an electric oven. Carefully (it's heavy!) after it first starts to simmer, move the covered stockpot to a 190°F oven. This saves the hassle of adjusting a burner for a consistent slow simmer and frees up the stove. Check the stock temp hourly and adjust your oven if needed until you are confident the stock is settled in somewhere around 190°F. Many ovens have an automatic 12-hour shutoff, so you should turn it off then back on before you go to bed if letting it go overnight. And then again when you get up, and again mid-day if you're going for a long cook. Check out the recipe notes below for other options.
- OPTIONAL: 30 minutes before finish add the optional batch of extra mirepoix. Get it submerged by poking it down or gently mixing near the surface, but don't aggressively mix. If your pot is already full to the brim, dip out enough of the stock to make room - saving it of course.
- 10 minutes before finish, toss in the parsley tops. Poke it down to submerge.
Process and store
- Remove from heat. The next steps should be taken without delay. The stock should be filtered and cooled quickly.
- Remove large items to a colander over a bowl to catch drippings. Don't give the bones to your dog - they have become very brittle. Bone-free meat scraps are fine. Filter out the remaining solids using cheesecloth, muslin, old clean t-shirts, a chinois, etc., whatever you have handy. Ladle through the filter into another pot. How well you filter it is a matter of taste but you sure don't want to keep any bone bits.
- Optional: (this step can be taken later if it is not convenient to do so now) Reduce the stock to make demi glace or glace de viande (meat glaze).
- Optional: If you prefer, salt to taste. Be aware, most recipes expect stock to be unsalted.
- Use an ice bath in the sink to chill the pot quickly to below 70°F. Then move to the refrigerator. Congratulations! Now you can relax!
- The next day remove any fat solidified on top. If you used olive oil during your roasting step there will be some of that too.
- Evaluate your stock for body — watch the video at the top to see how it should look. If not as gelatinous as you want, you can fix that by warming up the stock to around 140°F - 150°F and add 1 packet of unflavored gelatin per quart, first softened in 1/4 cup cold water. Then repeat the ice bath/chill step to get the stock below 70°F
- Optional: Clarify (Google “egg raft”). Leaves a crystal clear liquid — necessary for consommé, aspic or any soup which must be very clear. Another benefit is you have to find something to do with the yolks. Om nom nom nom.
- Good up to 4 days in the fridge... bring to a boil before using if you try to push that. Freezes forever. See KillerNoms.com/WildGameStock.php#storage for details on storage.
Recipe Notes
If making a large batch you may need more than one oven-load to get all of your bones & mirepoix browned. You may not be able to fit all of your pans into the oven at once, and thus might need to go through multiple roasting/deglazing steps - which can be time-consuming. It is what it is... don't overload your pans (which would leave some ingredients insufficiently browned). And always deglaze between batches - using water instead of any acidic liquid (wine, for example) if roasting in pans with an aluminum surface.
Alternative method: Instead of a stovetop or oven, try an old-style portable roaster oven (which run as large as 28 quarts). They can even be used for the roasting step. Or for smaller batches you can use a large slow cooker - using the "high" setting until it starts to simmer, then switching it to the "low" setting for the rest of the cook.
Either can be used outside (under cover, or weather permitting) or in the garage — a great idea in AC weather (you don't want all that heat fighting your air conditioner).
It can be a little fussy controlling the temperature of a manual roaster oven, but a plug-and-play PID controller like this can make it easy with a little time familiarizing yourself with the PID interface. PID's work with analog devices only, they are not compatible with digitally controlled cookers. They can used for precise temperature control of most any analog controlled cooking tool — including some electric smokers and most roaster ovens and slow cookers.
Here's a great use for a quart of venison or beef stock.
If making a poultry stock, here is my process for preparing the carcass: KillerNoms.com/poultry4stock
When it comes to stock made from commercial meat, here is some advice that may sound like hippie stuff - but I promise it's real world "better-on-the-plate" advice. Heirloom breeds are better than commercial breeds, especially for 4-legged critters. And grass-fed beef is definitely better than grain-finished. And pastured swine or poultry are better than confined.
One more time, age matters (older is better), food inputs matter (diverse is better) and motility matters (open-pastured/free ranging is better than confined). If you get your hands on an heirloom breed allowed to mature before slaughter, that had a diverse diet and needed to spend energy finding it's preferred food, you have something that makes incredible stock — almost as good as wild. And when it comes to domestic poultry, the absolute peak for stock is pastured spent-hens (hens past egg-laying efficiency). Good luck finding them though. If you find a reliable source, pass it along to me please!
Reminder, we're talking about stock, not meat. The American palate (mine included) has been trained to prefer young, tender, fatty meat. So for meat on the plate, quality is a very much matter of taste and habit. But absolutely nobody would prefer stock made from a 16 month old commercial breed steer finished in a feed-lot, over stock made from a 36 month old heirloom breed steer finished on pasture.
View online at KillerNoms.com/brownstock
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