Smoked Chicken Butter & Stock
“this bread and butter would be my death-row meal” a guest - November 2023
In developing a recipe for a smoked chicken stock (for bone broths and gravies), we started by smoking chicken wings over oak then slowly caramelising them in lots of good butter. The aroma of the chicken and browning butter might be the best thing we’ve ever smelled.
Many classic recipes would have you discard the fat you strain off from making a stock, but we couldn’t face wasting something that smelled so good. We let the fat cool and spread it over fresh bread - it was delicious, but a tad too rich and was a little greasy (owing to boiling off all whey from the butter). So we whisked in a little of the stock, some lemon juice, lemon zest and some flaky salt. The result was utterly delicious, so much so that it was hard to tell whether the butter or the stock was the byproduct.
For our menu, we whip the butter and serve it with a slice of our heritage grain sourdough. While our guests eat this course, we have been spotted doing rigorous quality control on both the bread and the butter - purely selfless of course.
Ingredients
Smoked Chicken Stock:
1.5kg chicken wings
20g Skimmed milk powder
250g good unsalted butter, cut into a few pieces
1 big onion, quartered
1 big carrot, cut into ½” slices
2 stalks of celery, cut into ½” slices
1 bulb of garlic, halved
1 cleaned leek
3 fresh bay leaves
5 sprigs of thyme
Half a dozen black peppercorns
Optional extras (black garlic skins, mushroom trimmings, parsley stems, additional chicken or pork bones and trim)
Smoked Chicken Butter:
Reserved fat from making smoked chicken stock
1 lemon: juice and zest
Roughly 50g smoked chicken stock (as needed)
fine salt (as needed)
Maldon Salt (as needed)
Method
Preheat a smoker to 100-120°C burning oak wood.
Place the chicken wings in a large bowl. Sprinkle the milk powder over the wings, tossing to coat evenly. Put the bowl of wings in the fridge for about half an hour to let the milk powder hydrate and get tacky.
Smoke the wings for 1.5-2 hours, turning after the first hour. As the chicken is going to be used for stock, I don’t really pay much attention to the internal temperature of the meat and I don’t tend to care much about fluctuations in the temperature of the smoker. The aims here are to perfume the wings with smoke, and to get a rich colour on the meat (which in turn will lead to a better coloured stock). Therefore I only really pay attention to the smell and look of the smoke exiting the smoker.
Once the wings are red-brown in colour, and smell lovely and smokey, transfer them into a cold pressure cooker along with the butter. Put the pot over a low heat to begin browning the chicken. The aim here is to caramelise the butter, dried milk and chicken skin, while simultaneously rendering as much fat as possible out of the chicken - so the gentler the heat the better. The best smell will fill the kitchen. Stir the pan often, don’t let anything burn.
Once the butter solids have browned and the chicken skin is crispy, turn the heat off under the pot and dump its contents into a colander set over a stainless steel mixing bowl.
To Make Smoked Chicken Stock:
Put the pressure cooker back on the heat. Deglaze the pot with a splash of water. Add the onion, carrot and celery to the pot and fry them for a few minutes. There should be enough residual fat in the pan to fry the vegetables, if there isn’t, add a teaspoon of the strained butter. Once the vegetables have been very lightly browned, add the garlic. Fry gently for a minute or two - be very careful to not burn the garlic, err on the side of caution.
Put the chicken and remaining ingredients back into the pot. Add just enough water to cover - for our pot this is about 2000g water. Bring the pain to a gentle simmer, skim off any scum that rises to the top, then cook at max pressure for 90 mins.
Let the pot depressurize naturally. Strain the liquid through a fine seive into a suitable container, chill over an ice bath, cover and leave it to set overnight in the fridge.
The following day, scrape the thin layer of fat off the top of the solidified stock. Keep this fat for cooking - I don’t add it to the smoked chicken butter because it can have a bit of a stewed vegetable flavour, which doesn’t work in that application. Portion and freeze the stock if it’s not going to be used that day.
To drink: season the stock with 0.5% salt by weight, add aromatics (tarragon, lemon rind, bay leaves etc.), bring it to a simmer and leave it to infuse for a few minutes before ladling into cups and enjoying.
To make a goood gravy: fry a few roughly chopped shallots in rendered bone marrow until well coloured, deglaze with half a bottle of dry cider. Reduce the cider and onion mixture over a medium heat until almost all of the liquid has evaporated, add about a pint of stock and a few sprigs of thyme, reduce to a nappe, strain, season and mount with smoked chicken butter. Whisk in any meat juices from the cutting board before serving.
To Make Smoked Chicken Butter
If you haven’t got a previous batch of smoked chicken stock: you’ll need to leave the butter until the stock is finished. Transfer the butter to a small container, pop it in the fridge. Once the stock is finished, get the butter out, melt it and transfer it back to a big stainless steel bowl.
Weigh the reserved fat. Butter is roughly 18% water, which will have boiled off, so you would expect to have roughly 205g of butter fat + whatever fat has rendered out of the chicken. Once you have the weight of the fat, you can calculate how much stock and salt to add to obtain the correct texture and flavour.
Multiply the weight of fat by 22% to determine how much stock to add (e.g. 205g fat x 0.22 = 45g stock). Weigh out and reserve this amount of liquid stock in a small container.
Multiply the total weight of fat + stock by 1% to determine how much fine salt needs to be added (e.g. (205g fat + 45g liquid) x 0.01 = 2.5g salt ). Weigh out and reserve this amount of salt. Note that this will not be enough salt for the final preparation. We’re aiming for a final salt content of roughly 2.5% - this is acheived by underseasoning the butter (to only 1% salt), then sprinkling a good pinch of maldon on top of the butter before serving it.
Set the metal bowl over an ice bath. Into the butter, whisk the stock, fine salt, and a little lemon zest & juice. Whisk until the butter is glossy and pale, and the browned butter solids are evenly dispersed throughout. Taste the butter and stir in additional lemon zest and/or juice with a maurice as needed. The butter should have a good balance of richness and brightness. If in doubt, more lemon juice is usually the answer, sharpness in the butter works well with acidity in the bread.
Reserve the butter in the fridge. Let it come up to room temperature before using.
This butter is very good for very many things. We use it to mount sauces, to brush on meat while grilling, to saute vegetables and so on. However the best application is the simplest: sprinkled with more lemon zest and flaky salt, and spread generously over a thick slice of fresh sourdough.
