Welcome to Make or Buy, in which we figure out whether it's worth it to make an ingredient from scratch, or shell out for the store bought version. Today: Should you make your own chicken stock?
Making your own chicken stock is a bit like flossing—you know you should do it, but somehow you find about 1,000 more important things to do with your time. Today, we're debating the merits of coughing up a couple extra hours a week to make your own homemade chicken stock versus buying it. Senior food editors Rick Martinez and Andy Baraghani weighed in with some answers:
A heavy-bottomed pot is essential for keeping long-cooking soups from scorching.
The Case for Homemade
In a perfect world, we'd all make vats of homemade stock forever and ever (and cleverly store it in freezer bags). Simmering a good-quality chicken with its bones and a handful of aromatics like onions, carrots, and celery transforms the contents of your pot into nothing short of liquid gold: a richly flavored, lip-smacking broth that takes risottos, soups, and stews to their most delicious potential. If you're making a casserole or a braise that only calls for a bit of stock (in addition to other liquids like wine), feel free to go for the store-bought stuff. But it's especially important to use homemade if you're making any kind of chicken soup, whether that's a classic chicken noodle or matzo ball: Nothing you buy in a box or can will provide nearly as much richness and deep flavor.
The drawback of making your own stock, of course, is that it takes a significant amount of time—15 to 30 minutes for chicken and veg prep, plus an additional two hours or so of hands-off simmering time. Plan accordingly and reserve this as a lazy-afternoon project.
The Case for Store-Bought
The sheer convenience of store-bought stock is undeniable: a carton or can of the stuff can save you several hours of precious time in exchange for about $5. But how to choose from the countless options at the supermarket? Our Test Kitchen prefers Swanson Certified Organic Free Range Chicken Broth because of its clean and mild chicken flavor, plus its low salt content. Many brands can pack in the salt, which can make it harder to control the saltiness of your finished dish, so always look for a lower-sodium option. One thing to note: Although technically stock and broth are different—stock is made with bones and has more body, while broth is made with just meat—there isn't a ton of flavor difference between store-bought stocks and broths, so feel free to use them interchangeably.
