by Frank Deis » Sat Dec 26, 2015 10:23 pm
I've been buying boneless skinless thighs. I enjoy knife work and in the past I have bought whole thighs cleaned them up myself, but as you say, you end up with SUCH a pile of waste that I have decided it's both easier and more cost-efficient to let them do the work.
My niece and her husband went to Cornell and took the "hospitality" track so they had wine tasting classes and they know quite a bit about food prep. We had a talk about making stock etc. over the holiday, and I was reminiscing about boning out whole chickens to make galantine, ballotine, and Tuscan versions of those. Have not done that for a long while, you have to really care about presentation because that's the point, you bring out something that looks like a pumpkin but when you carve it, it's a stuffed chicken! Anyway when I was making my own stock regularly I was using a recipe involving turkey wings that I got from The Splendid Table, and what made it worth while was that I was sharing the stock with neighbors who had a free standing freezer. They moved away and now if I made 10 quarts of stock I wouldn't have anywhere to put it. Sean, the husband, says he saves chicken scraps and makes stock when he has enough. Of course some recipes start with a whole bird, and the classic Chinese version of "double" stock has you make stock from a whole bird, and then use THAT stock as the "water" to make stock with a second bird! Plus of course I've made a Keller recipe where you make stock and add in a pound of chicken feet just for the luxurious texture that results.
Anyway these days I generally just open a can. Perhaps a bad habit but it sure is convenient and the results are not THAT obviously inferior for most uses.
