The single thing that most improved my home cooking wasn’t a technique or a gadget. It was making my own chicken stock. The difference between a soup made with homemade stock and one made with a cube or liquid stock from the supermarket is the difference between cooking and assembling.

This isn’t precious. It’s practical. Here’s how to do it with minimal effort.

Why bother

Commercial stock products — cubes, liquids, pastes — are mostly salt water with flavouring. Read the ingredients list. Water, salt, sugar, yeast extract, flavourings. Some of the better ones have actual chicken in them, but it’s still a pale imitation of the real thing.

Homemade chicken stock has body. It has depth. When it cools in the fridge, it should set into a jelly. That jelly is collagen, extracted from the bones, and it gives soups, risottos, braises, and sauces a richness that no commercial product can replicate.

It also costs almost nothing to make if you’re already eating chicken, which I assume you are.

The setup: save your scraps

This is the key habit. Every time you have chicken bones — from a roast chicken carcass, from thighs you’ve deboned, from whatever — save them. Put them in a bag in the freezer. Do the same with vegetable scraps: onion ends, carrot peels, celery leaves, parsley stems, leek tops.

When you’ve accumulated enough bones to fill a large stockpot (usually two or three carcasses worth), it’s stock day.

The basic method

Ingredients:

• Chicken bones and scraps (1-1.5kg)
• 1 onion, quartered (no need to peel)
• 2 carrots, roughly chopped
• 2 celery stalks, roughly chopped
• A few garlic cloves, smashed
• A handful of parsley stems
• 2 bay leaves
• A teaspoon of peppercorns
• Cold water to cover (about 3-4 litres)

Method:

Put everything in a large pot. Cover with cold water. Slowly bring it to a bare simmer — you want gentle bubbles, not a rolling boil. Boiling makes stock cloudy and can make it bitter.

Skim any scum that rises to the surface in the first 20 minutes. It’s just proteins coagulating. Not harmful, but removing it gives you a clearer stock.

Let it simmer gently for 3-4 hours. Don’t stir it. Don’t mess with it. Let it do its thing.

After 3-4 hours, strain it through a fine sieve. Don’t press on the solids — just let the liquid drain through. Pressing can make the stock cloudy.

Let it cool, then refrigerate. The fat will solidify on top — you can remove it or leave it, depending on what you’re using the stock for.

The lazy method (my actual method)

If I’m being honest, I don’t always do the full stovetop simmer. Here’s what I actually do most of the time:

Throw everything in a slow cooker. Cover with water. Set it to low. Go to bed. Strain it in the morning.

The result is not quite as refined as the stovetop method, but it’s 95 percent as good with about 5 percent of the effort. I make stock this way almost every week.

Storage

Homemade stock keeps in the fridge for 4-5 days and in the freezer for 3-4 months.

My tip: freeze it in various sizes. I use ice cube trays for small amounts (perfect for deglazing a pan or adding to a stir-fry), 500ml containers for soups, and 1-litre containers for big batches of risotto or braise.

Label everything with the date. Frozen stock all looks the same.

What to do with it

Almost everything savoury in your kitchen improves with real stock:

Risotto. The biggest upgrade. Risotto made with homemade stock has a depth and silkiness that the Massel cube version simply cannot match.

Soup. Obviously. But seriously — a simple vegetable soup becomes restaurant-quality when the base is real chicken stock.

Deglazing. After searing meat, deglaze the pan with a splash of stock instead of wine or water. Those brown bits on the bottom dissolve into pure flavour.

Cooking grains. Rice, quinoa, couscous — cook them in stock instead of water. Simple change, significant improvement.

Braising. Any braise — lamb shanks, chicken thighs, osso buco — is better with real stock as the liquid.

Common questions

Can I use raw bones instead of cooked? Yes. Raw bones make a lighter, cleaner stock. Roasted bones (leftover from roast chicken) make a deeper, darker stock. Both are good. I mostly use roasted because that’s what I have from dinner leftovers.

Does the quality of chicken matter? Somewhat. Free-range chicken bones from a good butcher will produce a richer stock than conventional chicken bones. But any chicken bones are infinitely better than a cube.

Can I add other aromatics? Absolutely. Ginger, lemongrass, and star anise make an Asian-influenced stock. Fennel and thyme give you something more Mediterranean. Adapt it to how you cook.

What about chicken feet? They’re the secret weapon for gelatinous stock. Ask your butcher. They’re cheap and most people don’t want them, so they’re usually available. Add three or four to your regular stock and you’ll get an incredibly rich, jiggly result.

Once you start making your own stock, you’ll wonder why you ever bought the packaged stuff. It’s one of those cooking fundamentals that pays dividends in everything you make.