If you hunt around, you can find pretty good deals on chicken broth or stock, or you can find yourself paying $4 a pint. Since one of soup’s virtues is its economy, and since chicken stock, or broth, is key to over half the soups I make, keeping the price of stock down as much as possible is a priority.

So, your best option would be:

A)      Clip coupons
B)      Watch the shelves for sales
C)      Use concentrated bases
D)     Make our own
E)      All of the above

I’m a fan of E) All of the above, but D) Make our own has a lot going for it. If we weren’t doing this for the fun of it, as well as economy, C) concentrated bases would probably edge it out price wise, but for quality, it’s hard to beat store bought. Or is it?

To find out, today’s soup is Chicken Noodle, by way of some stock experiments.

Occasionally we’ll pick up a roast chicken at the supermarket, or even roast one ourselves, and I never fail to take advantage of that and make stock out of it. But when you’re making soup every week, you need more stock than whatever happens to fall into you pot. If you’re  looking for cheap but flavorful chicken parts to throw in your stockpot…why not wings?

Speaking of pots, my “new” Revere Ware 1801 Stainless bottom set arrived this week (This Old Pot) and this stock will be their first outing. Well, except for heating water for coffee, which I’d normally do in the microwave, except that I really want to play with my pots.

I started out with three and a quarter pounds of chicken wings when they came home from the store on Thursday, but now it’s Sunday afternoon and they’ve dwindles to a mere two and a half pounds. Probably not enough for the two gallons of stock I wanted, but maybe just enough for one gallon.

The traditional split on making stock is that you either roast the bones or you don’t. Since I’d have to get the meat off, and this isn’t about making things complicated, I’m going for a simpler dichotomy. Half the wings get sautéed with a little oil until they get a nice golden color, and half don’t.

(In retrospect, cooking the wings at 350 f for 20 minutes until they’re golden colored would have been simpler than the pan frying method I used here.)

Into each stockpot goes

• 1 lb 4 oz of chicken wings.
• 2 tblsp Olive Oil

The stock I’m not sautéing doesn’t need the olive oil, but I added it just to be fair.

The wings take 20 minutes on medium-low heat to get nice and golden on one side. and then I’ll flip the wings for another 8.

I don’t know if this bodes well for the stock or not, but looking at the golden wings, I just want to toss them with salt and Tabasco sauce and go watch football. And I don’t even like football.

Normally, I’d want to sauté up some onions and celery for a Euro/American stock, or some ginger and green onions for an Asian stock, but they can go in later, and for the moment I’m interested in how sautéing or not affects the stock.

I add 2 quarts of water to each pot, bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer and cook covered for one hour.

If my interpretation of the rules is right, what I have now should qualify as broth, though as plain a broth as is possible. Strained through cheesecloth and seasoned, it should have some flavor.

And it does.

The un-sautéed broth is fairly colorless, with a slight milky white appearance. The sautéed stock on the other hand, looks like chicken broth, nice and yellow.  Next time I think I’ll just roast the wings in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes and get the same effect with less effort.  Neither has much going for it unseasoned, but after adding salt to each they suddenly seem much richer…actually tasty. Compared to commercial broths, they’re not as strong though, and either taking them on for another hour or using a pound of chicken wings per quart instead of about half that would probably do the trick.

After straining the stock and taking the meat off the wings, I’ve got about three and a half quarts of stock and three cups of chicken meat. The meat has some flavor, but has clearly given up a lot for the cause.

Then, after all that, I mixed the two stocks, threw the bones and skin in and simmered it for another hour. Waste not, want not.

And now I can make the Chicken Noodle Soup…

The usual suspects found themselves on the chopping block: two cups each of celery and carrots, about a cup of onions, and a handful of mushrooms I found in the fridge. While the stock was simmering, I sauteed them all together in stockpot #2 and strained the stock in on top when its time was up.

I had the Paul Simon herb set left over from last week’s Tomato Bisque, so I used it all; parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. No bay leaf, though it usually goes in about here. The rosemary and time got tied up in a bouquet garni, and yanked out after a half hour of gently simmering.

Somewhere along the way I added 3 tablespoons of salt and a light grinding of fresh pepper.

The pasta portion of the soup could have been egg noodles, except I didn’t see any at Trader Joes when I was shopping. Instead, I used two cups (before cooking) of Farfalle (bowtie) pasta. Cooked separately, then drained and added at the last minute along with the chicken pieces. Normally, we cook pasta al dente, but for the soup, it went just a bit longer…though not so far as to be mush.

Not only does it look and taste like Chicken Noodle Soup, both soup and stock are rich and full of flavor. FTW!

Postscript: the vote is in: “Great soup! Perfect comfort food” say my gal.

Total yield was just under four quarts, btw. Total cost well under $10 for everything.