Stock it Up?

Korrs: as simple to use as the setting sun.

I used to collect the breast bones, when I buy the fillets of breast meat, from the chicken stores in the wet markets; for the sole purpose of making my own stock. And it was a stock with a difference: there's no added vegetables at all, despite what Julia Child and Michael Smith wax on about using veggies to add flavour - so, no carrots, no celery sticks. Instead, the pot of water is simply filled with chicken breast bones, and this successfully intensifies the chicken essence.

However, I find it a pain to stock up on my home-made chicken essence. It takes up too much room in my freezer (they have to be frozen because I use a recipe that requires it only once in a while). And I hate thawing out the frozen packets of liquid only to discover that it wasn't necessary to have thawed two whole packets - that was just way too much stock.

So I've since packed up my stock pot and have now resorted to using Korr's cubes of chicken essence. The primary rule in this instance is very simple; whatever volume of stock is required by a recipe, I use the same measure of water and melt into that a single cube of Korr's magic ingredient.

And that concentrates the flavour so much, I don't need to season my dish with salt and pepper. And this rule of thumb I adhere to regardless of whether I am stirring up some warm rice salad, making the pea salsa sauce to dress my salmon or baking limey chicken in a very hot oven. It's definitely a cube for what I dish for a dinner for two.

Even then, there's a word of caution here: don't automatically think that you need to triple the cubes from Korr when you're now serving six. The liquid and stock cube ratio isn't a linear progression. Two cubes is plenty for   half a dozen seated for dinner, or even seven.