Every time you eat a chicken, or especially a turkey, save all the scraps. The bones, the skin, the connective tissue. It isn’t pretty, meat can still be attached. Toss it in the fridge overnight in big plastic bags.

The next day get your biggest tallest pot (tall is better than wide, less surface area at the top for evaporation) and fill it with the carcass bits, then fill with water or store bought broth, how much to fill depends on how much stock you want, or how strong you want it to be. Toss in some salt (you can add more later) and any aromatic veggies (carrots, garlic, onion, celery) or herbs (thyme, bay, rosemary, parsley) you want, you can also wait and just add the veggies to your finished soup later. With herbs you can add them now though, I like to go out and just pick a few big sprigs in the garden and toss them in, they don’t need to be chopped. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cover, simmering or lightly boiling, for 4-8 hours (do this in the morning while making breakfast).

Strain all the the solids with a colander, saving the liquid of course, and then use a fat seperator or skim off as much fat as possible, and you have liquid gold.

If you put this stuff in the fridge, chances are it’ll end up looking like jello because of all the delicious collagen (techically protein, but the finger licking good quality of it will make you think it is fat) that you pulled out of the chicken carcass. This stuff makes the best soup, or you can add a little bit to mashed potatoes, or use in any recipe that would call for chicken stock or broth.

To make the soup transfer your liquid gold to a new pot or crock pot, add in left over or new chicken meat (chopped small) your vegetables, potatoes, etc. And cook, add noodles or dumplings later for appropriate cooking times, or serve with fresh baked bread. Best soup ever, and pretty healthy, darn near fat free if you separated the fat out. Store bought stock or broth has salt in it, but your homemade stuff will not unless you add it, so you need to season it to taste. Put a little salt in, try a spoonful, ask yourself, does it need more? If so, add a little more, try again. That is what “season to taste” means. Knowing when it has enough is a skill chefs develop over time. Remember, you can always add more salt, you can’t take it back out, so go slowly until you get better at estimating.

The day after is even better, it gels up in the fridge and the soup gets ultra thick.

And to think, you were just going to throw that chicken carcass away.

Today, I wish to talk about cooking methods and why they can affect your food.

Stews and boils are cooking food submerged in water, steaming is of course cooking food surrounded by water vapor, and braising is cooking food sitting in water (not fully submerged). All of those cooking methods have one drastic limitation, namely that water cannot exceed 212 degrees. Boiling water is going to be 212 degrees no matter how hard it is boiling. This means, anything cooked in water or water vapor will not be able to exceed ~212 degrees.

This is good in many ways. You can cook something for a long time and if there is adequate moisture you know it will not overcook or burn. It is really hard to burn things that are in boiling water, and that water helps moderate the temperature of your food, preventing drastic swings.

However, there is a major downside to cooking in water, and that is that it inhibits the Maillard Reaction.

For instance, any dish that requires a browned topping will always tell you to either cook uncovered, or uncovered for a period of time to brown the top. This is because covering a cover traps steam, which then keeps the temperature moderated at around 212, way too low for the Maillard Reaction.

So what is the Maillard Reaction? It is the reaction which caramelizes sugars in food to turn it brown. The most straightforward example is the creation of actual caramel from sugar. The sugar is denatured into over a hundred different compounds, creating a very sweet and complex taste.

But nearly everything has sugars (starches) in it, and so the Maillard Reaction is also responsible for making toast taste so much better than bread, for making skin crispy on turkey, for making grill marks on meat, and for making pretty much every golden brown and delicious food, golden brown and delicious. This all doesn’t really start to happen until around 230 degrees and continues on up past 300.

So, you can’t get browning, in any food, in the presence of water. So, if you want crisp, you need dry heat. This is also why you can’t really brown things in the microwave (microwaves just heat water, water can’t go higher than 212) and why non-stick pans can’t really brown food either (They also just don’t get hot enough… nor are they supposed to, high heat ruins their nonstick surface).

But in addition to browning the outside of food, the Maillard Reaction will work on the interior as well. This is why roasted vegetables taste so much better than boiled vegetables.

So, now you know. This is why certain foods taste better when cooked with dry heat, and this is why you are sometimes asked to brown and or roast something before introducing it to liquid.