"Julia Altshuler" > wrote in message
news:qiQsb.141846$9E1.717742@attbi_s52...
> I'm feeling a bit better today, but was surprised yesterday when my
> boyfriend came home from the supermarket with the report that he'd asked
> for chicken bones and learned that they don't sell them. He asked for
> chicken backs or chicken wings with which to make chicken soup and
> learned that they didn't have those either. The best he could do was a
> package of 4 chicken legs (which cooked into a very thick, gelatinous
> broth without much flavor but all the healing properties I could ask
> for). Does no one make chicken soup from scratch anymore that bones
> aren't available at the supermarket?
>
> If I do find bones at a specialty market, how long can I freeze them for
> and, would freezing them have any effect on them later when I went to
> use them for soup? Or is it better to freeze the chicken stock? How
> long can freeze stock? Finally, is there anything I can do to improve
> the flavor? Maybe my tastes are changing, but it seems that we used to
> make chicken stock at the Culinary Institute that tasted good. I would
> have sworn I used the same method yesterday and ended up with broth that
> was bland. What puts the flavor in chicken soup? Is the difference in
> the fact that I used bone in drumsticks instead of bones or something
else?
>
> --Lia
>

The flavor is mostly in the meat - there's very little if any flavor in the
bones themselves. I think that the "bones" people use to make chicken soup
refer to the leftovers from a roast chicken, and the flavor comes primnarily
from the bits of meat that are still attached. I have never seen chicken
bones per se for sale, although some stores carry backs and necks for this
purpose. You can make a wonderful stock from legs - I do it regularly when
they are on sale at 19 cents a pound. Use a cleaver to chop them into 1"
pieces and then proceed as usual. Simmer for at least 2 hours. If your stock
was tasteless I suspect you used too much water or perhaps had a batch of
bland chicken!


--
Peter Aitken

Remove the crap from my email address before using.