I’ve been making homemade chicken stock pretty much since I started cooking. In college, it was just an economical way to stretch a $5 rotiserrie chicken. The problem is, I never graduated from my original technique: take all of the meat off a rotisserie chicken and reserve for another use; toss chicken carcass into giant pot with a halved onion, a carrot or two, and a stalk of celery; fill giant pot with water; simmer for hours; strain and freeze. The result of that method is certainly broth, it’s just not that good. Cloudy, thinly flavored, and a little gray – it’s fine for adding to a stew or sauce but certainly not something I would sip on it’s own.

It wasn’t until I spent six weeks in Asia last winter that I discovered that good stocks and broths aren’t only the backbone of a soup or a sauce, but culinary achievements in and of themselves. Of course, I knew this before going to Asia – I consume enough food literature to know that a good broth should stand on its own, needing no other embellishment to be enjoyed. But I didn’t really internalize how good a broth could be until I’d experienced the dumpling soups in Hong Kong, which consisted of broth, dumplings, maybe a few noodles, and that was it. No veggies floating around in these soups, or creams to thicken them, or salty slices of kielbasa. Then we moved on to Japan and consumed ramen for basically every other meal. There, broth took on another dimension of deliciousness – although for ramen it’s not so much about clarity and purity as it is about richness and salt.

Since coming home, over a year ago now, I have been pouring my heart and soul into making a perfect homemade chicken stock. I know precisely what I want to achieve: a stock that’s golden, clear, richly flavored, with just enough fat to lightly coat your mouth after a spoonful. I’ve been doing lots of research, and experimenting, and taking detailed notes on each batch.

After a recent batch, which I always seem to be putting away boiling hot at 10pm on Sunday night, Trevor looked and me and said “I can’t believe you make stock every weekend.”

“Not every weekend,” I corrected him. “But often,” he said. “It’s not like you tried it once and said ‘yep, I’ve made stock.’ You’re more like a Russian grandmother: ‘on Sundays I make stock, to feed the family and use up the chickens'”

That’s pretty much the long and the short of it.

Despite Trevor’s teasing, I persevered, and after a year of testing, I think I have it down. I’ve learned a lot of lessons on the way, helped by the notes and trials of more experienced chefs. Serious Eats taught me to cut my vegetables into small pieces instead of throwing them into the pot in chunks. Vietnamese Home Cooking taught me to blanch and rinse the chicken before starting the stock itself and to keep it at a low simmer to prevent cloudiness. I learned through trial and error that a 50/50 mixture of chicken backs and drumsticks or legs makes for the best balance of flavor, body, and affordability.

As far as aromatics, in my opinion, it’s the more the merrier. I always use 5 core vegetables: onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and one hot chile pepper. Beyond that, I’ve experimented with rosemary, parsley stems, shiitake mushroom stems, ginger, lemongrass and leeks. I find that the flavor only gets richer and more interesting the more I add. I always salt the broth at the beginning, which some experts say is a no-no, but I think it makes a big difference in the final flavor. And I use about 1 1/2 pounds of chicken for every quart of stock I want.

How I ever got any flavor out of a skimpy, already roasted, 1 pound chicken carcass without any meat beats me, especially since I was drowning it in a giant stockpot of water. I suppose I’m just glad that now I know better! Do you have any tips for making great homemade chicken stock? Although I’ve come a long way, I’d love to hear them. I’ll keep the recipe below updated as I find new tricks, but a year’s worth of testing went into it so far, so I can vouch that it’s a very solid recipe.

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Perfect Homemade Chicken Stock

Makes 3 quarts of stock.

• 2 lb. chicken backs or carcasses
• 2 lb. chicken drumsticks or legs
• 5 quarts of water
• 2 onions, skins on, chopped into 1 inch pieces
• 3 carrots, chopped into 1 inch pieces
• 3 stalks of celery, rinsed well, chopped into 1 inch pieces
• 1 dried hot chile
• 6 cloves of garlic, cut in half
• 1 bunch of parsley stems
• Optional additions: handful of clean shiitake mushroom stems, 1 inch peeled and sliced fresh ginger, 2 sprigs rosemary, 2 tsp whole black peppercorns
• 1 TBS sea salt

1. Place the chicken parts in a large stockpot. Add cold water to the pot just to cover the chicken. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and boil for 2-3 minutes – white foam should float to the top of the pot. Remove from the heat and drain the water out. Rinse the chicken with cold water two to three times, draining after each rinse. The goal is to get as much of the blood and foam out of the pot and off the chicken as you can.
2. After blanching and cleaning the chicken, add the 5 quarts of cold water to the pot with the chicken. Add the chopped onion, carrot, celery, hot chile, garlic, parsley stems, and sea salt to the pot. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Keep the stock at a low simmer until it is golden and color and the liquid has reduce by about half. This should take 3-4 hours. If the stock reduces too quickly without turning golden, add another 2 cups of cold water. Keeping the stock at a low simmer instead of a boil will help prevent the stock from getting cloudy.
3. When you think the stock is done, taste it to see if you are happy with the flavor and body. If it is done, let the stock cool for about 20 minutes, before straining it through a fine-mesh strainer into a large bowl, mason jars, or other storage containers. I like to ladle the stock out of the pot through the strainer as it gives me more control. If you disturb the vegetables too much while ladling or straining the stock, it may become cloudy.
4. Refrigerate or freeze the stock and use as needed for soups and sauces. Use the refrigerated stock within 3 to 4 days.

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It feels like ravioli season to me.  I don’t know that anyone ever named November ravioli month, but it would seem appropriate to do so.  It’s time for comfort food – it’s getting cold, the days are getting shorter, and all sorts of things that are delicious in raviolis – butternut squash, sage, chestnuts, mushrooms – are coming into season.  A bowl of steaming ravioli with a thick, tangy sauce seems about as comforting as comfort food can get.

I enjoy making pasta by hand, but I don’t do it that frequently.  To me it is only worthwhile when I’m filling the pasta with something interesting – the difference between the flavor of the $2 boxed fettucine and my hand cut fettucine is just not worth the time, but the difference between the flavor of pre-packaged tortellini and homemade ones is well worthwhile.  When I do break out the pasta roller for ravioli, I tend to make a lot at once and throw a few meals worth in the freezer.  It even goes by pretty quickly with help from a friend who’s willing to work for his dinner.

This particular recipe is another one from Peter Berley’s Modern Vegetarian Kitchen, and stuffs a classic semolina pasta dough with a white bean and sage filling, then serves the pasta in a light saffron-infused vegetable broth.  I did make a few significant changes to the broth, choosing to cook all of the vegetables together and then remove them all, leaving a clear broth, rather than leaving the carrot and fennel pieces in the soup, as the recipe calls for.  I enjoyed both parts of the recipe, and would make the broth again for an elegant presentation, or perhaps even as the base for a soup, but probably not if I was just going to eat the ravioli themselves – I think they might be better suited to a thick tomato sauce.  I might even take these the greek route, and add a small amount of feta cheese to the bean mixture, although they were also delicious with just the beans as a filling.  I did end up adding some of our homemade cheese to about half of the ravioli to a positive effect.  Yes, I said homemade cheese.  You can have the full story when we’ve got a little bit of a better handle on the whole cheesemaking process, but if our most recent attempt is any indicator, there may be some super delicious cheeses in our future.  With or without cheese, I enjoyed these bean filled ravioli, and I’m looking forward to the few dozen I have stashed in my freezer for the next month!

Looking for more ravioli?  Try these beet ravioli with goat cheese, these pumpkin stuffed ravioli served in a coconut curry sauce, or these delicate mint-flecked ravioli filled with sweet peas.

White Bean Ravioli in Orange-Saffron Broth

Adapted from Modern Vegetarian Kitchen.  Makes about 4 servings

For the pasta:

• 1/2 c. semolina flour
• 1/2 c. AP flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 2 TBS warm water
• 1/2 TBS olive oil

For the filling:

• 1 TBS olive oil
• 1/4 c. finely chopped onion
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 2 tsp finely chopped fresh sage
• pinch red pepper flakes
• 1 c. Great Northern beans, cooked (from 1/3 dried beans, soaked and cooked)
• 1 tsp red wine vinegar
• salt
• pepper

For the broth:

• 6 c. cold water
• 1 onion, chunked roughly
• 1 stalk celery, chunked roughly
• 1 carrot, chunked roughly
• 1 fennel bulb, chunked roughly
• 2 tsp tomato paste
• 8 garlic cloves, peeled
• 8 leaves fresh sage
• 2 tsp fennel seeds
• 1/4 tsp saffron threads
• 2 3-inch strips of orange peel
• 1 bay leaf
• 10 whole peppercorns

1. Make the pasta dough: in a large bowl, whisk together the semolina flour, AP flour, and salt.  Make a well in the middle of the flour and crack egg into well.  Beat egg lightly in the well, then add water to the well.  Use a fork to slowly pull the flour on the outside into the wet center, trying not to disturb the well for as long as possible.  Continue doing this until the dough is an even consistency.  The dough will be fairly dry, but should stay together when pressed.  If it does not, add 1 TBS of water.  Pull dough together into a loose ball, drizzle with olive oil, then wrap in plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.
2. Make the filling: heat a medium pan over medium-high heat.  Add the olive oil, onion, garlic, and sage, and cook for 5-7 minutes, until beginning to brown.  Remove from heat and add to cooked beans, along with vinegar, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.  Mash the mixture with a potato masher until it is mostly smooth with a few bean chunks.
3. Roll out the pasta according to pasta maker instructions, starting on the largest setting and working your way down.  Cut the resulting pasta sheets into 2-inch by 4-inch rectangles, and place a teaspoon of the bean filling on one side of each rectangle.   Use your pinkie finger dipped in cold water to brush the edges of the dough with water, then fold opposite side of dough over, pressing along edges to seal ravioli.  Work in batches – the dough will dry out quickly if it is left as sheets for long.  It will take longer to dry out when pressed in a ball.
4. Make the broth: place all the ingredients in a large stockpot and cook at a simmer for 1 hour, adding 1-2 cups more water if necessary as the water evaporates.  Strain the broth through a colander, catching the broth in a bowl and discarding the cooked vegetables and herbs (or eating them).  Season the broth to taste and set aside.
5. Cook the ravioli in a large pot of salted gently boiling water.  They should cook in approximately 2 minutes.  Serve ravioli in a warm bowl of broth, garnished with orange zest.

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