The Difference Between Chicken Stock and Chicken Broth

Is it chicken stock or chicken broth?

I am constantly asked, “What’s the difference between chicken stock and chicken broth?” Many cooks and chefs use the words “stock” and “broth” interchangeably.  I have done a lot of research on the subject to clear up this issue, both for myself and for my readers.  My conclusion:  there is no real way to clear up this debate.

Unsurprisingly, it seems that most chefs and sources fall into one of two camps:  the one that uses the words interchangeably and the camp for which there is a distinct difference between broth and stock. And be careful, I have received some pretty heated emails from people who don’t agree with my definition and can only respond by asking if we can agree to disagree?

Some definitions state that a “broth” is a finished product that can be served as is, while a stock is a component of a dish and is never served on its own.  According to these definitions, the only difference between the two could be the addition of salt to make a broth out of a stock.

So What Is Broth and What Is Stock?

For the sake of clarity, I think that home cooks should understand the distinction, when one is made.  Broth is made when vegetables and/or meats are simmered gently in water to extract all the flavors.  Stock is made when vegetables and meaty bones are simmered gently in water to extract all the flavors.  Simply put, if the mixture was not made with bones, it is not a stock.

If you go with this definition, then there is no such thing as vegetable stock. It can only be called vegetable broth since there are no bones - at least not in my veggie stock but I still call I still call it veggie stock now and again.

*Disclaimer: Understand that the distinctions are very murky.  I am trying to clarify the distinction based on my research and what some of my chef friends have told me.  If you have read/learned otherwise, it is a matter of source more so than a matter of right and wrong.

To me, a stock brings body to a finished dish.  Broth brings flavor.  Heating bones (as well as vegetables and meats) gently in hot water extracts a lot of gelatin.  This happens when the connective tissues attached to the bones, as well as within the bones themselves, melt and dissolve into the surrounding liquid.

If you have ever made a stock with a high proportion of bones, you will notice that the stock has a jelly-like consistency when chilled.  This happens when the gelatin sets up in the refrigerator, much like a favorite gelatin dessert!

Body or Flavor?

The downside of making a stock with just bones is that, while you get a lot of body, you don’t really get a lot of meaty flavor.  In order to have a full-bodied, meaty stock, you really need to use a combination of meat and bones.  Make a stock with both, especially if there will be minimal finishing before serving.

If, for example, you are going to use some stock as a braising liquid, plenty of meaty flavor will come from the meat to be braised.  In that instance, the stock would not necessarily have to be meaty to begin with.  If, on the other hand, you are going to use your stock as the main liquid component in a soup, you might want to start with a meatier-flavored stock.

When you want the flavor of a dish to be more pronounced than the body, you might consider making a broth.  Personally, I find that a hearty, meaty soup can sometimes be a bit overpowering when made with a rich stock.  In these cases, I prefer using as a base a flavorful but lighter broth.

As an illustration of the differences between broth and stock, consider these recipes for chicken broth and chicken stock:

Chicken Stock*
(Lots of body, not a lot of meaty flavor)

• 3 pounds Meaty chicken bones—thighs, wings, backs—or a whole chicken carcass from a roast chicken
• 1 medium onion, halved
• 2 celery ribs, cut in half
• 1 large carrot, scrubbed and cut in half
  1 head garlic, cut in half
• 2 bay leaves
• 12 peppercorns
• 5-6 stems from parsley and/or thyme
• 4 quarts cold water

Chicken Broth*
(Lots of meaty flavor, not a lot of body)

• 3 pounds dark meat chicken
• 1 medium onion, halved
• 2 celery ribs, cut in half
• 1 large carrot, scrubbed and cut in half
• 1 head garlic, cut in half
• 2 bay leaves
• 12 peppercorns
• 5-6 stems from parsley and/or thyme
• 4 quarts cold water
• Salt, to taste

For both of these recipes, the procedure is the same.

1. Place all the ingredients in a stock pot.
2. Cover all with cold water
3. Slowly bring up to a simmer.
4. Simmer stock for 6-8 hours; broth for 2-3 hours (it takes longer to extract all the gelatin from the bones than it does flavor from the meat)
5. Add salt to the broth, to taste

*For a full-bodied and meaty stock/broth, use 3 pounds of bones plus 1-2 pounds of meat.

After all this, I’m not really sure that I have cleared up the debate for you.  I do know that, when I have the time, I will always choose homemade broth or stock over canned, mostly because I can control the ingredients and the amount of salt I add.

We’ll also have to talk more about those bouillon cubes that are so salty with some chicken flavor added and should be avoided at all costs.

Related Topics

Homemade Chicken Stock

Dinner at Vetri

On Friday I celebrated my birthday by meeting my wife in Philadelphia and checking into an historic bed and breakfast called the Morris House Hotel. This is a huge deal for us because we can count on two hands the number of nights we’ve both been away from our kids overnight. We did get some protest from our 11-year-old Maddie when she heard she wasn’t joining us.

After checking in and sharing a split of champagne, we headed out the door for the second part of my birthday surprise. We walked a few blocks over to Spruce Street to one of the best and most difficult restaurants to get into in Philly by the name of Vetri. I have met Chef Marc Vetri several times because of my involvement with The Great Chefs Event and have dined at his other restaurant, Osteria, several times but never at Vetri.

My wife booked the reservation 3 months earlier as part of this incredible birthday celebration surprise.  The tiny 35-seat restaurant has been voted “One of America’s top 50 restaurants” by Gourmet magazine. Mario Batali said, “Probably the best Italian Restaurant on the East Coast.”  I knew it was going to be great because of my experiences at Osteria and from all the great things friends have been telling me over the years.

Unfortunately neither Marc nor his partner Jeff Benjamin were there this evening but it didn’t matter. The restaurant runs like a well-oiled machine and the staff including general manager Bill McKinley know every ingredient in every dish and every grape in their rather large selection of wines. I know, I think we tasted a large number of them before the night ended.

There are two seatings at Vetri, 6 pm and 9 pm. We were there for the earlier and I’m thankful for that. At my age I don’t think I could have made it through 3 hours of tasting the vast amount of the most delicious foods paired with perfectly selected wines if we started at 9 pm.

The menu is exclusively a tasting menu. In the past, you could order a la carte but now you are handed a large menu with four categories and many selections under each one. Our very knowledgeable and friendly (but not too friendly) waiter explained we could let the chef know if there was something on the menu we had to have or something we wanted to stay away from or just let him choose. We requested the chef choose everything for us but we preferred if we weren’t served the Roasted Sweet Bread with Romanesco Salad but would eat it if put in front of us. It was not served.

I said our waiter but in reality, there are several staff members who work hard to make your dining experience as pleasurable as possible. They are all well versed in how the food is prepared and each ingredient involved, some I was unfamiliar with. They are also encyclopedic in their knowledge of each wine of which there were many. We decided to go all out and order the wine pairing for each dish and their 3-ounce pours were more than generous. I’m not saying we were overserved but it was close!

I’m not a food critic so I didn’t take notes on each dish. I didn’t want to ruin this incredible dining experience with my wife by writing down and taking photos of each course.  Besides, they give you the menu and wine list with all the pairings at the end of the night and we were having way too much fun.

The menu is a work of art by itself. It looks handwritten by Marc with an artistic drawing of a fork running down the middle of the page. It would look very nice framed and hanging in my kitchen as an inspiration of what can be done with simple fresh ingredients.

Speaking of inspiration, many of the dishes found on this menu can be found in Marc’s cookbook, Il Viaggio Di Vetri. I learned this when I asked the waiter if the Sweet Onion Crepe with White Truffle would be in his next cookbook and was told it is already in Il Viaggio. This was my favorite dish of the night and of course I ran home the next day and tried to make it in my kitchen. I’ll be writing more about this in a future post.

The bottom line is most of the dishes we enjoyed on this amazing night are available in his cookbook and more importantly doable. Some take a bit of prep and “slow cooking” but they are not overly complicated. I highly recommend you check out and purchase Marc’s Il Viaggio Di Vetri if not for the photographs and stories alone. I hope to eventually attempt every recipe in book. Enough said.

Here are some of the dishes we enjoyed on my birthday night. I may have left one out or included one I wish I tasted. I’ll skip the wine parings for now and talk more about them another time but you can also go to Vetri online and learn more about the food and wine.

Aperitivo E Assaggi (translated means Aperitif and Taste) - this consisted of a plate of locally grown vegetables cut into julienne sized pieces with a balsamic vinaigrette dipping sauce. I remember carrots and zucchini.

There was also this incredible plate with an assortment of little treats to get the appetite stimulated that included homemade salami, Foie Gras Pastrami with Pear Mostarda and brioche*, duck pate, and I think some roasted vegetables in a pastry and pickled radish but I’m not sure of these last two.

Sweet Onion Crepe with White Truffle Sauce* - my favorite dish of the night and not that difficult to make at home.

Burrata with Chanterelles and Watercress - Burrata is a form of fresh mozzarella cheese that is made with a pocket where pieces of the curd and cream are added. Chanterelles is a form of wild mushroom.

Spinach Gnocchi with Brown Butter - gnocchi is an Italian pasta that is sort of like a dumpling and some say got its name from the word nocca meaning knuckle.

Almond Tortellini with Truffle Sauce

I think we also had the Goat Cheese Agnolotti with Spring Onions - Agnolotti is a style of ravioli from the Piedmont region of Italy. They are very small and hand made.

Soft Shell Crab with Fregola and Green Beans. Fregula is a type of Pasta that comes from Sardinia, Italy and looks a lot like Israeli couscous. The dough is made from semolina and is rolled into 2-3 mm diameter bows and toasted.

Baby Goat with Freshly Stone Milled Polenta*

Alaskan King Salmon with Chickpeas and Spring Onion Agrodolce - agrodolce is the Italian version of sweet and sour sauce.

Desserts

We started off with a plate of various Italian cheeses and then had a taste of Molasses and Wild Berry Gateau. Gateau is a type of Italian sponge cake. For the life of me, I can’t remember what the other dessert was but I think it was some flavor of gelato. It could have been the incredible Domaine de Grange Neuve Monbazillac 2001 dessert wine that fogged my memory.

Most of all, I would like to thank my brilliant and beautiful wife for making this happen. Thank you sweetheart.

And here are some photos from Vetri’s Flikr Slideshow.

* recipe in Il Viaggio Di Vetri

How to Freeze Food For Reheating

Recently I asked readers to let me know what they wanted me to write about. I received dozens of great responses including this one from Lee who said,

I do a lot of cooking in advance and would like to know if the various dishes freeze and reheat well. Or, can I freeze the food at a certain point in the preparation and add other ingredients (the ones that don’t freeze well) later? It would be wonderful if every recipe gave this information.

Lee, I agree. It would be great if all recipes came with instructions for freezing leftovers. Some do but most of the time they must expect us to cook for one sitting or finish everything that night. I’m not a nutritionist or food scientist but I did a little research and came up with some guidelines that you may find helpful.  There is lots of information on the Internet that cover this topic and I suggest you do your own search for more detailed information on freezing foods.

Finding the Time to Cook Every Night

Most parents want to serve their kids nutritious and tasty meals.  And most people want to eat meals that are nutritious and tasty.  The problem is that, between working, taking care of the house, getting the kids to tennis or physical therapy and still having a minute to sit down and relax, it is often hard to find the time to cook a complete, healthy meal from scratch every night.  I know it is a problem that I run into at home quite frequently.

So what’s the answer? Yes, you could hire a personal chef or go to one of those meal-planning places or just order take out, but all of that can get to be pretty expensive.  Although we enjoy getting the odd take out meal every once in awhile, the answer for us is refrigeration and freezing.  Most foods can be stored for up to seven days in the refrigerator.  That sounds like a long time, but here’s how to do it safely:

1. Make sure that whatever food you are making gets cooled down quickly.
2. Refrigerate the food preportioned, whether it’s enough to feed five or two.  Reheating and cooling foods repeatedly can encourage bacterial growth, so only reheat what you are going to eat and leave the rest in the fridge.
3. Reheat the food to at least 160 degrees F for 15 seconds.

According to some of my chef friends, food safety guidelines say that food should only stay in the temperature danger zone (between 41F and 140F) for no more than four hours.  So, the more quickly you can get it above 140 degrees F when you’re first cooking it, the more quickly you can chill it to below 41 degrees F and the faster you can bring it back up to serving temperature when reheating, the safer you will be.  To err on the side of caution, though, I really wouldn’t recommend storing foods for more than five days, if you can help it.

Freezing Foods

I turn to the refrigerator first, because I can put almost anything in it without worrying if it will reheat okay.  But, what if you want to store foods for a longer time, or what if you want to make more of whatever you’re cooking than you can eat in a week?  Then, it’s time for the freezer.

Freezing can be a bit tricky, though.  Not all foods freeze well, and when thawed, some are downright unpleasant.  Remember these two cardinal rules, though, and you can still enjoy some very tasty frozen and reheated meals.

1. When it comes to freezing, the faster you can do it, the better the texture and taste of the reheated food. Freezing foods slowly allows large ice crystals to form. This can adversely affect the texture of foods, especially foods that contain a relatively high concentration of water (milk, sour cream, cheese) and/or cell walls that can be ripped apart by crystals (most fruits and non-starchy vegetables).  So, the same rules apply here as apply in refrigeration: chill foods before putting them in the freezer and freeze the foods in portions, or at least in thin layers (like spread out in 1 or 2 gallon freezer bags.
2. Keep the air out and the moisture in. If you are planning on freezing food for long term storage, you will want to wrap it so a minimum of air can get in.  The air can cause the surface of the frozen food to oxidize, changing the color, flavor and texture of the food.  It’s still safe to eat, but just because it is safe doesn’t mean that it will taste good.The other thing that can happen if food is not wrapped very well is freezer burn.  The ice crystals in the frozen food naturally want to be in the coldest part of the freezer, which is on the walls of the freezer itself.  As the ice molecules migrate, they are taking moisture out of the food, resulting in dried out and tasteless dinners.The absolute best way to minimize oxidation and freezer burn is to use a vacuum-based food saver type solution.  Since all the air is pulled away from the food and the bags are heat sealed, little to no air can enter, and little to no moisture can leave.If you do not have a vacuum sealer system, use heavy duty zip top bags and press as much air out of them as possible before sealing.  Limit the amount of time that you leave the food in the freezer, too.  I don’t care how well wrapped it is, nothing is going to taste good after being in the freezer for five years.

Here are some cooking guidelines if you are planning to cook specifically to freeze and then reheat later.

1. For casseroles, under-cook the starch by 3/4 to account for those starches softening up while frozen. So, if the package calls for cooking pasta for 10 minutes, only cook it for 7-8 minutes.  If the rice should be ready in 20 minutes, only cook it for 15 before adding in the additional casserole ingredients.
2. Do not freeze anything with sour cream in it. Sour cream gets very watery after being frozen and can affect the texture when reheating.
3. For best results, don’t freeze any prepared foods for longer than a month. Guidelines might give some foods several months in the freezer, but since we’re talking about freezing recipes and not just ingredients, err on the side of caution for best flavor and texture.
4. The flavor of salt and herbs can get more powerful over time in the freezer. Under-season the food to be frozen, and then season to taste once reheating.
5. Consider only freezing a portion of the recipe and finishing it upon thawing. This is especially true with pasta dishes.  Since it only takes a few minutes to cook pasta, you may as well just go ahead and cook it fresh while reheating your frozen sauce.
6. Think about freezing each portion of the meal separately. For example, if you want to reheat a stir fry, rather than piling all the ingredients together to freeze, freeze the broth portion in ice cube trays.  Freeze the protein and vegetables in bite sized pieces.  Then, when it’s time to stir fry  you can throw a couple of cubes of broth in a wok with the frozen protein and veggies and have a great meal in just a few minutes.  When you freeze a bunch of different flavors together in the same container, the flavors have a tendency to get muddled up.  By freezing everything separately, each ingredient maintains its own unique characteristics.

Since there are some foods that just don’t freeze and reheat well, you can opt to cook most of your recipe ahead and freeze it, adding in the “problem ingredients” during reheating.  These foods include:

• sour cream (gets very watery)
• cooked egg (becomes rubbery)
• cream cheese (becomes grainy and watery)
• cornstarch for thickening (thicken with cornstarch after reheating or use arrowroot which freezes well)
• milk, skim, 1% and whole (they separate on thawing)

What Are Your Experiences With Freezing Foods?

We all experience freezing foods whether purchased frozen, purchased fresh then frozen or after cooking. Personally, I’ve had all sorts of experiences with foods I’ve tossed into the freezer. Some wrapped better than others, some left in the freezer too long so I’m wondering what your experiences have been freezing food and leftover and what tips you have to offer.