Chicken Foot Glace
I’ll be the first to admit that Chicken Foot Glace, or concentrated chicken foot stock, isn’t really a side dish by itself. But I am including this recipe because the glace can be frozen for whenever you are ready to use it, and because it is an ingredient that will elevate your cooking at home. Add an ounce of this glaze to a hot pan while you are cooking vegetables. Use it as the base for a quick sauce or gravy, mounted with butter and seasoned with salt & pepper. Add it to a soup that needs a richer and deeper flavor…The possibilities are endless.
Ingredients
- 5 pounds of chicken feet
- 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 1.25 gallons of water
- 3 onions, (roughly chopped)
- 3 large carrots, (roughly chopped)
- 4 celery stalks, (roughly chopped)
- 2 bay leaves
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 525F.
- Toss the chicken feet with the vegetable oil and place on parchment paper on a sheet tray (or two sheet trays if you need more space).
- Place the chicken feet into the hot oven, and broil until the chicken feet are golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and carefully add the chicken feet to a large stock pot.
- Cover with 1.25 gallons of water and bring to a simmer
- Cook on a low simmer for 2 hours, skimming off the fat and scum that rises to the top of the pot.
- Add your vegetables and bay leaves, and continue to cook for an additional 2 hours.
- Strain out your vegetables and chicken feet from the chicken foot stock.
- Discard chicken feet and vegetables.
- Return the chicken foot stock to the pot, and cook at a steady simmer for roughly 2-3 hours, stirring frequently, until you have reduced the liquid down to roughly 1 cup of glace.
- Cool down the concentrated glace that you have created in the fridge.
- When the glace is cold, it will be a block of beautifully-flavored chicken gelatin, perfect for soups, sauces, or a quick burst of richness and flavor.
- You can cut this up and freeze little cubes for whenever you want to use them.
Notes
The classic ratio of stock to glace is 16:1. This means that 16 cups of chicken stock (or 1 gallon of chicken stock) will give you 1 cup of glace, when you reduce it down for hours. The flavors and collagen become even more concentrated as the chicken stock reduces down into glace.
You don’t have the reduce the stock down all the way to one cup. For example, if you reduce a gallon of stock down by half, you have demi-glace, which is amazing to have on-hand in your fridge or freezer. True glace just takes the process a step further, creating a product that is incredibly concentrated and almost pure collagen.
Some people will fill an ice cube tray up with glace, creating little frozen cubes that can be transferred to freezer bags and stored in the freezer. You can keep these safely stored for months, pulling out a cube or two for whenever you need to use it.
You don’t have the reduce the stock down all the way to one cup. For example, if you reduce a gallon of stock down by half, you have demi-glace, which is amazing to have on-hand in your fridge or freezer. True glace just takes the process a step further, creating a product that is incredibly concentrated and almost pure collagen.
Some people will fill an ice cube tray up with glace, creating little frozen cubes that can be transferred to freezer bags and stored in the freezer. You can keep these safely stored for months, pulling out a cube or two for whenever you need to use it.