Chicken Broth/Stock Recipe

make things from trash

Chapter 2

(necessary before making cheesy broccoli rice casserole because you ran out of broth).

Go to the grocery store in a futile attempted to find acetaminophen. When there isn’t any, just start comfort shopping through the wasteland. Walk the soup aisle just to confirm reports that “gross soups” are the only ones left. Do not buy Cream of Cheeseburger. Instead, wander over to prepared foods and grab a rotisserie chicken. Wait at the newly drawn line 3-feet before the checkout aisle for the teenage checkout clerk to wipe and sanitize the belt and then her hands before inviting you to begin unloading your finds. Assure her that the disinfectant wipes in your cart are from home and that you no longer touch anything with your bare hands. Pay close attention to your diction because it’s hard to understand you through the bandana covering 2/3 of your face.

Get home and start watching today’s White House briefing on your computer while pulling all the meat off of your rotisserie chicken, remembering to eat the best parts as you go: skin, oysters, those thin fatty flappy bits, the pope’s nose (if you are into that). Call the president a racist c**t when he, AGAIN, refers to it as the Chinese Virus. Continue breaking down the meat between creative strings of profanities shouted at the computer screen. Be careful not to break the wishbone because, you know, every little bit of magic is worth believing in right now.

Once you are left with nothing other than a pile of bones and your frustration with the government, pick up your heaviest knife and VERY CAREFULLY break as many of the bones as you can. Trust me. Opening up the bones means that you are getting to all that delicious marrow and you need this. Really get in there and break shit. Watch your fingers because no one at the hospital needs to be wasting protective gear just to stitch up your stupidity. Honestly, if you do cut yourself, wash it out and throw some superglue on it. You’ll be fine. Cooks and bartenders have been sealing wounds like this since the dawn of superglue. If you lose a finger, just think what a great COVID story it will make one day.

Put the deboned chicken meat in the fridge for sandwiches or something, set aside the pile of carnage and scour the fridge for any scrap of vegetables. There should be half an onion and probably some ashy baby carrots in a bag somewhere, some garlic. Kind of chop those. It doesn’t matter. It’s all gonna get boiled and strained out at the end.

Grab a big pot, add some kind of fat and turn that burner up. Toss in your veggies. Realize that the White House briefing is over and that they literally said nothing useful and probably very little truthful. Continue watching the commentators rehash what little information they got out of it. Wonder why Fauci wasn’t in the briefing yesterday afternoon. Worry about Fauci for a little while. Realize that you might be a little in love with Fauci. Stir your veggies until they soften up a bit, maybe sprinkle in a little of your breakfast wine. Throw all your bones and meat scraps in there and stir it around for a minute before realizing that the chicken is already cooked, so what exactly are you cooking at this point? What, you are just browning? I mean, browning is good, right? It’ll add flavor. You are doing fine. Feeling fancy? Toss some herbs in.

Fill the pot with water and bring to a boil, then set to like a medium simmer. It depends on how much attention span you have. Maybe a low simmer if you intend to go on Facebook or Twitter, Bumble, Grinder, Her, Lex, (Whatever. Romance is dead) get lost in the scrolling and forget that you put something on the stove. Regardless, let it cook for like a long time. What is time anyway? Last week was 5 years ago.

If it reduces too much while you were busy snorting the last crumbs of your girl scout cookies, add some water back in. It’s fine, right? Taste it. It probably doesn’t taste like much because you didn’t add any salt. Add salt now, at the end, because you have learned by now not to add too much salt until the end. Marvel at the way salt made it taste like actual soup! And you thought you’d messed it up! You didn’t! Salt fixed it!

Awkwardly strain your broth. Don’t do that thing where you forget that you want the liquid, not the solids, and pour it into the colander like it is pasta. Refrigerate or freeze that good stuff and remember that we figured out ways to use scraps and garbage a long time ago, we just forgot that resources are FOR REAL LIMITED until now. Confront your privilege and figure out ways you can be a more responsible consumer when all of this is over.

#COVIDcooking

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