GREAT COOKING IDEA

My girlfriend is of Chinese descent and a month ago I discovered a cooking secret that she had never mentioned to me, and confirmed that this is very popular in Chinese culture. It's not really paleo in concept but adds lots of new flavours to the diet.

First you make up a basic stock in a large stock pot. Typical recipe might be:

3 litres water
600 ml bottle of dark soy sauce
some cooking wine and some fish sauce
20 cloves garlic chopped
Large piece ginger, grated
5 spice, star anise, etc
3 chicken frames, smashed.

Boil for an hour, strain, and in the stock gently simmer a whole shoulder of pork for 5 hours.


Lift the meat out of the stock and serve: the meat falls off the bone.

Here's the trick. Fridge the stock, it's good for about a week. Then next time right in the stockpot, simmer a pair of chickens, or ducks, or more pork. Each time you use it the stock gets richer and richer. Occasionally throw in some more soy sauce, garlic, a cinnamon stick or two.

Apparently there's a chinese restaurant in Boston who have had their stock on the go since 1934. If you reboil and fridge it each time (I keep mine in the beer fridge in the garage) it won't kill you.

Also a layer of fat builds up, which is excellent for cooking when skimmed off.


The Iron Chefs will have to kill me now.

Happy eating.

Michael Gardner, Australia

what is a chicken frame ?

A carcass?

Yum... chicken frames...

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia at supermarkets and delicatessens where they sell fresh chicken pieces they go like this:

Drumsticks
thighs
thigh fillets
wings
breast (skin on or off)
mixed pieces
maryland (thigh plus drumstick attached)

Whatever is left over is sold as frames or carcasses, and is the ribcage, back
stuff and neck. Whereas, say, drumsticks might be selling for $4 a kilo Australian, frames go for about $2 .Looks like roadkill but is usually very fresh and great for making stock and soup because there's a useful amount of meat still on them. As with many foods in Australia it tends to be bought by people of immigrant background, e.g. Italian or Greek etc.

Cheers

Michael Gardner

We have them here too! All butcheries sell them separately. We use them to make an assortment of soups and broths. We also toss in veggies and other meats like pig's trotters, snout, bone marrow, etc. This makes an amazing broth. Very low carb.

This sounds great!! I am going to give it a whirl and see if it tastes as good as it sounds *yum*

Nope don't get it here. Chicken comes as: breast, leg, thigh,drumsticks,wings (only recently), quarter and half. Almost all the old cuts are being replaced by quarter and half, so no waste and no frames.
On the other hand, I can get a whole fresh 'boiler' (read, knackered tough old egg layer) for £1.99 or a small frozen chicken for but the same.

BTW, anyone tried pig snout? What's that like?

The closest we get to chicken frames here is necks and backs and they are not always available not like they used to be. I think this is because people are no longer spending time making soups. I went to Safeway once and asked the butcher for beef soup bones. He said they'd been thrown into the trash. Sad.

Ian, I've had pig's snout, ears, trotters and cheeks! Delicious.....mmmm......

And don't forget pig's feet with lot's of garlic. Yummy!

How do you persuade a pig to walk around in garlic?

Punchline: Tell him it's easier than high heels?

sorry.

Ha, ha, ha!!!
BTW, pig's trotters are pig's "feet".

When my son was much younger he came home from school and related what he'd recently learned. "Cows give us milk, chickens give us eggs, and pigs give us bacon," he chirped happily. So Ian, we don't have to persuade pigs to dance in garlic, they do so voluntarily and happily.

tee, hee....voluntarily!