Chicken stock with sauteed breast meat

This is a slight variation on the Cook’s Illustrated chicken stock recipe, intended to end up with meat that can be put into soup. Again, it’s good because it’s quick, but the chicken-hacking is a fair amount of work (and this one is more work than the other, since you have to extract the breasts and hack up a whole chicken rather than just cut up some backs). As with that recipe, I also leave out the bay leaves or replace with ginger slices. I might try doing this recipe with chicken backs and bone-in breasts to save some of the work.

Ingredients

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion, medium diced
1 whole chicken (about 4 lb), breasts removed, the rest hacked into 2-inch pieces
2 quarts boiling water
2 tsp salt

Directions

Heat the oil in a large stockpot or dutch oven on medium-high. Add the chicken breasts and saute until browned on both sides, about 5 minutes. Remove and set aside. Add the onion and saute about 3 minutes. Remove to a large bowl. Add half of the remaining chicken pieces to the pot. Saute until no longer pink, 4-5 minutes. Remove to the bowl with the onion. Saute the rest of the chicken. Return the onion and chicken pieces (excluding the breasts) to the pot. Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook about 20 minutes, until the chicken releases its juices.

Meanwhile, bring the water to a boil. Increase the heat to high. Add the boiling water, the chicken breasts, and the salt. Bring to a simmer, then cover and barely simmer about 20 more minutes.

Remove the breasts and set aside to cool. Strain the rest into a container. When the breasts are cool, shred the meat by hand. Optionally, shred any meat on the remaining pieces as well (though it’s more work for less meat). Refrigerate the stock overnight, then skim the solid fat from the top (fat can be skimmed without refrigeration if you want to use the stock the same night, but it’s easier when it’s cold). Makes about 2 quarts of stock.