To make duck stock…

Here at British Food, we don’t like anything to go to waste, so apart from the history behind our food and the recipes that go alongside it, I am also going to provide recipes that use up the left-overs. We’re always being told of the mountains of food we are wasting and what we should do about it; in the past, of course, nothing went to waste, so I suppose by adding recipes for stock and things like that, I am still being historical. In the past, people didn’t want to waste money – that doesn’t just go for the average families, but also rich homes, where the cook really had to have a knack for meal planning and budgeting. We really need to look at our ancestors to see how our food can be better managed. I try and get as many meals as possible out anything I buy these days and have really cut down on my grocery bills, this way I can afford to buy meat from farmers markets and the like all the time now.

So, I have already told you about ducks and given a recipe for roast duck, so now here’s what to do with your left-over carcass. I made soup with my carcass, but duck stock also makes great risotto (but that is not very British, so there’s no recipe for that!).

The ingredients are not set in stone, so use whatever suitable veggies you have lying around that you think would be nice. Any road, here’s the recipe for a nice subtly sweet duck stock; it makes 2 pints.

Ingredients:

one duck carcass

a large carrot, roughly chopped

a celery stick roughly chopped

leek trimmings

two cloves of garlic, lightly crushed

bouquet garni: several sprigs of thyme, a bay leaf, parsley stalks, a strip of thinly pared orange zest, 6 peppercorns

any left-over scraps of jelly or gravy

2 1/2 pints of water

salt

Preheat the oven to 200⁰C (400⁰F). Put the broken-up carcass and stock vegetables in a roasting tin to brown and slightly caramelise in the oven for 25 minutes. Place the carcass and vegetables, along with the bouquet garni, peppercorns and the left-overs, into a pan. Put the roasting tin over the heat and deglaze it with a little of the water, using a wooden spoon to get off all the nice burnt bits. Add this to the pan with the rest of the water. Bring steadily to the boil and simmer for around 2 hours.

Pass the stock through a sieve into a bowl, jug or other pan. Season with salt and let it cool completely. Skim any fat that will have risen to the top. The stock can be used straight away or refrigerated or frozen for future use.

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