Do you make home-made chicken stock?

I tend to agree with JessM as to get any flavour into the stock it needs to be reduced alot for it to taste of anything. A slow cook pot or Aga would do a good job without wasting too much fuel.
Cooked bones, as in from a roast chicken, don't give off as much flavour as raw ones do.

my stock has chicken in it

Lovely story, gracesmum ! My DH is another who buys expensive cookery books and follows the recipes exactly. He's never happy with the result and when he wants that thing again, he asks me to do it because my method of getting a rough idea of what's going on from the book, and then substituting, making do, ignoring and changing, doing it all in a fraction of the time, and clearing up afterwards, is usually more successful. I guess it's down to practice, as usual with anything requiring skill.

Ah well Gracesmum it kept him happy. But don't you love those cookery books that seem to assume you have all day, and a team of sous chefs?

Funny I should spot this today. DH bought a Heston Blumenthal cookery book last week and announced he wanted to make chicken stock. Heart sank, but smiled and said That would be nice. Then he decided we need a pressure cooker, so off we went to John Lewis and he bought one (I left him to it) and thence to Waitrose for all the ingredients. (Can you see where this is going? ) £30 later.........Anyway today he started and it took all early afternoon to chop veggies and put in neat bowls, boiled chicken pieces in pressure cooker which then had to cool for about 2 hours, then added veggies, then it had to cool again and lastly he has to "infuse the peppercorns and parsley. This is taking about 7 hours so far and the cost will be about the same as champagne by the time he is finished if not more by the time you factor in the price of the book. I actually like the "blobs" of stock which I use all the time, but it has kept him happy (I think) although he is also moaning that his back is hurting. Oh I did suggest sitting down to do the veggies, but he knew best.

Many years ago we lived in Singapore, courtesy of the Royal Air Force. I watched how the street vendors tested their qwalis to see if they were hot enough to cook on. They spat on them, and if the spit bounced, then the heat was correct. We ate out a lot there with many many friends, and none of us ever got an upset gut.
I gather that has all gone now,

Mamie made some today!! Thanks for tip!

With things made by caterers for "events", you have no idea how many hands touched it in the making, how many people at the event leaned over it to help themselves and so on. All these people may have been perfectly clean and healthy but perhaps a bug or two was lurking around. What you prepare yourself and only serve up as much as needed, wrapping the rest and storing it at once, there are only one persons germs on.

Some people are more sensitive to tummy bugs. One son-in-law gets anything that is around, and really suffers, the other seems to have a cast-iron stomach. He can eat destructively hot peppers too.

We had a cous-cous salad made on Friday, the left overs put in a container and then fridge. We had some on the Sat. but by Sunday it smelt 'funny' so dumped it. I was surprised that it had 'gone-off'. Maybe the caterers had made it a day or so before?

J's tum is definitely more sensitive than mine. I have the dustbin type.

Do you think some people have more upsetable tums than others?

Thanks, jess. I reckon my basic food hygiene must be pretty good then. Tummy bugs very rare. Last one was many, many years ago and I thought it was from mushrooms, but hard to tell. I didn't eat mushrooms for a long time afterwards!

That's generally true Bags but some food poisoning bacteria produce toxins that are not as easy to destroy as bacteria - and it is usually the case with bacterial diseases that its the toxins that make you ill, not the bacteria themselves. (This is the talking to I give myself when agonising over whether to bin something slightly risky)
But the bacteria also have to come from somewhere e.g. other ingredients in a rice salad or biryani, someone's hands etc. So if you boiled or fried the rice it is sterile at that point, leave it in the same container, cover it and chill it, the chances of getting food poisoning are infinitesimal. Once you start sticking utensils in it, mixing other ingredients with it etc, then there us a chance of contamination.

And I never got any bugs from eating leftover rice in Thailand, in spite of no refridgeration and ambient temperatures in the thirties and forties. Like salmonella, if you know how to reheat the stuff, the germs aren't a problem.

By the way, I got the rice is life phrase from some of my adult Thai pupils. I got them to talk about food in English. No-one mentioned rice! When I commented on this and said that we all ate rice three times a day so wasn't it worth a mention, they said something to the effect of "oh but we don't need to mention rice; rice is life."

Fried rice is popular in cultures where rice is life. Good reason for that, I reckon. You should see how hot they get their woks in Thailand!

Ah-ha - you have it sussed mamie.

We have a big central plate on our (bottled) gas cooker, so we tend to do the stock alongside other stuff. We have tried cooking on the wood-burning stove, but the smell permeates the whole house. We do bake, then slow-cook stuff in the bread oven as it cools down, to save fuel.

interesting merlot - I think the freezing of left over rice immediately tip is obviously a good one as then is is well below 4C. It does however use energy - both to cool it and then heat it again, so it might be one of those occasions when the throwing away food bullet should be bit. As in: it is only cheap rice and not worth spending money on.
Boiling stock until its concentrated also must use a lot of fuel. So unless in possession of Aga, is it worth it?
Reboiling stockpot daily a good hygiene measure - but again uses quite a lot of gas and electricity.
I agree re chicken carcasses not being wasted. I bought a big chick last week and we had several meals off it. I did proper stuffing (cranks wholemeal breadcrumbs, home grown thyme and parsley) Made some yummy soup with it yesterday - added yet more fresh parsley. I have lots of last year's parsley in the garden about to run to seed, so finding many ways of using that up at the moment (and not wasting it!)

The other thing about the "reduction to ice cube size method" Nanaej, is that if you need a concentrated sauce you don't have to add all the liquid and then reduce, you just wing the ice cube in!

Bacillus ceraeus is the bacteria which can contaminate rice and cause severe food poisoning. It can multiply in a domestic fridge at 4C. It's not really safe to re-heat rice especially in take-away food.

I have a freezer full of stock and regularly forget to get it out to defrost ..but now I can copy mamies DH and put it in ice cube trays as they will defrost more speedily! Why couldn't I think of that myself ? [doh] emoticon! Thanks

Put the carcase in the slowcooker covered with water and leave on overnight-don't know how much this costs fuel wise but the kichen smells wonderful in the morning and if I'm insomniac I can always turn it out at 3am andjeni jewish chicken soup is best cure ever for a cold

My home made soups are all made from boiling up the carcasses,and occasionally they contain everything left lurking in the fridge,but nobody has been I'll yet. Chicken soup is good and delicious medicine,used regularly in this house to boost the spirits and comfort those with colds. Nature's penicillin.

I usually boil up the carcass while it still has some meat on it, take the meat off whne cold, cook some lentils and onions, a little garlic sometimes and add....also any other bits I think of if I have them...good chicken soup.

My DH makes the stock; chicken, lamb, beef, game, fish or veal (from bones roasted in the oven) plus celery, carrot, onion and herbs. He cooks it, takes the fat off and then reduces it right down and freezes it as cubes in an ice tray. Consequently we always have bags of stock cubes in the freezer.