This is recipe 3 of our 3 meal chicken feature (first, joint your chicken...) all you have left now are the carcass, neck & wing tips - time to make stock! Once made, use in the coq au Sharpham, risotto, or - and here you can use chicken scraps off the carcass - chicken vermicelli soup

Ingredients - makes about 1litre 2 organic chicken carcass, wing tips and neck 1 large onion, skin on 2 carrots, peeled 1 leek, trimmed 2 sticks celery sprig thyme 2 bay leaves parsley stalks tsp peppercorns

Method

Stock is the basis of many good things, especially risotto. Everyone has their favourite way of making stock and here follows mine.

1 I am a great believer in using uncooked chicken bones for stock. Somehow you never get the same depth of flavour by chucking in the remains of the Sunday roast and it always seems a little greasy. Quickly wash the carcass, neck, chicken skin and wing tips and place in a large saucepan with quartered onions, carrots, celery, leek, peppercorns, thyme, bay leaves and parsley stalks.

2 Cover with water and cook at a bare simmer for 1-2 hours. For me life is too short to skim stock to get a 100% clear bouillon. I just sieve it into a plastic container, refrigerate and scrape the fat off when it has solidified. You can always leave any sediment in the bottom of the container. If you are going for a broth/soup type dish there will be useful scraps of meat on the carcass that you can pick off the bone once it has cooled down.