Great ingredients make for great meals. Whenever you can, use the highest quality supplies for your recipes. The flavor difference will always come through in your finished dish.
If there is an ingredient that you are not familiar with, check our Ingredient section. There are pages and pages of information about the ingredients used in my recipes.
Ingredient Information
Should You Use Prepared Stocks?
Making your own chicken stock is a lot easier to do even in today's busy world. You can use leftover vegetable scraps, shrimp shells or chicken bones. Freeze them and making stock is easy. The videos at the bottom of the page show you how.
The one key is to not let the stock boil as you make it and this does mean that you need to watch stock carefully as it simmers. Boiling results in a cloudy stock and a burned, bitter flavor.
There are a myriad of prepared chicken stocks on the market. A lot of times this will be labeled "chicken broth." Stocks in the form of boullion cubes or powder make a terrible substitute for chicken stock. Just avoid them.
You can find stock in cans and cartons. They also have a lot of salt in them and many have too much fat as well. Most of these are pretty terrible but there are a few that are good for day to day use.
I use a stock that comes in a carton. It is by Healthy Valley and is fat free. I chose this after a group of foodie friends got together to taste all of the stocks that we could find on the market. It has sodium in it - about 400 mg per cup so in some sauces I am more careful about adding salt. Having stock is essential in cooking and you should keep a couple of cartons in the pantry.
How to make your own shrimp stock
How to make your own vegetable stock