Recipe for "chicken-broth"

NAME

     CHICKEN-BROTH - Rich homemade chicken broth
     Surely people who make use of bouillon cubes  have  no  idea
     how  easy home-made broth can be.  This is not a traditional
     method, but it produces good results.

INGREDIENTS (makes 4 liters)

     1         stewing chicken (or 2  broilers  and  a  stick  of
               butter)
     4 l       water
     1         large yellow onion
     1         bay leaf
     1 bunch   parsley
     1 bunch   fresh thyme (or a teaball with 3  ml  dried  thyme
               inside)

PROCEDURE

          (1)  Take one large, heavy, lidded pan-mine is  a  six-
               quart  enamelled  cast-iron  Copco pan with twenty
               years' good cooking already logged, and I live  in
               terror  that  yuppie  burglars  will break into my
               house some night and steal it.  Put  into  it  one
               fat  old  chicken.   If  you live in a part of the
               world where there are  no  fat  old  chickens  for
               sale,  put  in  two  scrawny  young chickens and a
               stick of butter.
          (2)  Put the pan in a cold oven, turn  the  temperature
               to  160  deg.  C and wait patiently, doing nothing
               whatsoever to the chicken, for about  four  hours,
               till it's dark golden.
          (3)  Take the pot out of the oven and let  it  cool  to
               room  temperature.   Strip the meat off the bones.
               Cover everything, meat and bones, with 4 liters of
               water  at  room  temperature.   Add  a  raw onion,
               peeled and quartered, a bay leaf, a bunch of pars-
               ley  tied  together with string, and a small bunch
               of thyme similarly tied or a  teaball  with  dried
               thyme  leaves in it.  Bring the water up to a sim-
               mer and let it just simmer (make a mirror, as  the
               French  say)  for  ten  minutes.   Turn it off and
               return it to room temperature again.
          (4)  Take the meat out.  It is not as good  as  it  was
               before  the wee simmer, but perfectly satisfactory
               for chicken  salad  or  on  waffles  with  creamed
               chicken or whatever.  Waste not want not.
          (5)  Add another quart of water, bring the  broth  back
               up  to  a simmer and simmer it for twenty minutes.
               Strain out the bones and vegetables.   You  should
               have about four liters.

NOTES

     I've never had good luck freezing broth (it starts to  taste
     thinnish),  so  this  is  as much as I ever make at once.  I
     keep it in the  refrigerator  in  liter-size  canning  jars.
     I've  read  that  you  should  simmer saved broth for twenty
     minutes every four or five days, but  it  never  lasts  that
     long in my house, so I can't comment.
     I use a cup wherever a recipe calls for  a  cup  of  chicken
     broth.   And  then, after it's been around for a day or two,
     somebody suggests we really haven't had  chicken  soup  with
     rice  for  a  long, long time ... or matzoh dumplings ... or
     tortellini in brodo ... and then it's all gone.

RATING

     Difficulty: easy.  Time: about 6 hours, most of it  waiting.
     Precision: no need to measure.

CONTRIBUTOR

     Mary-Claire van Leunen
     Digital Equipment Corporation, Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, CA
     mcvl@decsrc.ARPA  or  decwrl!mcvl