How to Make and Freeze Homemade Chicken Stock into Concentrated Cubes

The top and bottom of all the vegetables, and the garlic, need removing. Peel the parsnip and carrot with a potato peeler, and remove the skin from the onion and the garlic.

Cut the parsnip and carrot into large pieces and quarter the onion. Leave the garlic whole.

Put the garlic, vegetables and peppercorns into a saucepan. You will need a saucepan that's big enough to take the chicken, but not too big. One where the chicken nearly touches the sides should be big enough. The pan used here was 20cm (8").

Add the carcass, and then add enough cold water to the saucepan to cover the chicken. Put the pan on a low heat and bring to a simmer.

Remove the pan from the heat and strain the liquid into another, slightly smaller, saucepan, using a sieve lined with kitchen paper. The kitchen paper helps remove what would otherwise pass through a sieve, but it will clog up during the process, so the paper will probably need renewing one or more times.

After reducing the liquid, the stock was poured into a bowl and left to cool. Once cool, the bowl was left in the fridge overnight.

After chilling it, remove the bowl of stock from the fridge and scrape off any fat that may have risen to the top. The stock may have jellified due to being concentrated, so gently heat it in a saucepan, or zap it in a microwave, to turn it to liquid again. Don't boil or overheat it.

Once it is liquid again, pour the stock into an ice cube tray and, after it cools enough from the heating, if applicable, put the tray into the freezer. Using an ice cube tray allows small, individual portions to be frozen, which is useful if you are cooking for one.

When the stock is frozen, remove the stock cubes from the tray and put them into a sealable bag.

When stock is needed, defrost one frozen stock cube. This can be added directly to a recipe or, if a larger quantity is needed, the stock can be dissolved in boiling water to dilute it. How much water to use depends on how strong you want the stock to be. 100 to 200 ml (4 to 8 fluid oz) of water is normally enough.