Chicken and Bacon Bone Gravy

Chicken stock is lovely but polite. Add a smoked bacon hock and it grows teeth. The smoke and cure give a savoury depth you would otherwise be chasing with yeast extract, and the two flavours sit together naturally because they always have done. Watch the salt and this is a very hard gravy to beat.

Ingredients

Makes about 600ml

• 1.2kg (2lb 10oz) chicken bones carcasses, wings and backs
• 1 small (about 500g) smoked bacon hock or a bacon knuckle
• 1 tbsp rapeseed oil
• 2 onions halved
• 1 carrot
• 1 stick celery
• 1 leek green tops, washed
• 2.5 litres (4.5 pints) cold water
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 black peppercorns
• 25g (1oz) butter
• 25g (1oz) plain flour
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• black pepper salt only if needed

Kit

• Roasting tin
• Large saucepan
• Fine sieve
• Whisk

Method

1. Cover the bacon hock with cold water in a pan, bring to the boil for 3 minutes, then drain and discard the water. This takes the sharp edge off the cure and stops the finished stock being too salty to use.

2. Heat the oven to 210C fan (230C conventional, gas 8). Toss the chicken bones with the oil and roast for 40 minutes, adding the onions, carrot and celery for the last 15, until everything is well browned.

3. Put the blanched hock in a large saucepan with the roasted bones and vegetables. Deglaze the roasting tin with a mug of water and add that in.

4. Cover with 2.5 litres of cold water, bring slowly to a simmer and skim. Add the leek tops, bay and peppercorns.

5. Simmer at a bare tremble for 3 hours. The hock needs the full time to soften and give up its smoke, while the chicken bones will have finished after two, which is a fair compromise.

6. Lift out the hock, strip the meat off and shred it for a pie or a soup. Strain the stock and taste it. Dilute with a little water if the cure has made it too salty.

7. Reduce 1 litre of the tasted stock to 800ml in a wide pan, but only if it is not already salty. Reduction is not automatic here, salt decides.

8. Make a roux with the butter and flour, cook it for 2 minutes to golden, whisk in the hot stock and simmer 5 minutes. Stir in the parsley and plenty of black pepper. Taste before adding any salt at all, and often you will find it needs none.

Tips worth knowing

• Blanch the hock first, every time. A smoked hock straight into the pot gives a stock you cannot reduce and can barely use.
• Taste before reducing. This is the one recipe in the section where boiling it down can ruin it rather than improve it.
• The shredded hock meat is worth more than the gravy to some people. It makes an excellent chicken and bacon pie with a splash of this gravy stirred through.
• Green leek tops give body and a mild sweetness for nothing. Do not throw them away.

Keeping and reheating

Stock keeps four days chilled and four months frozen. Gravy keeps three days. Label the stock as salty so you do not use it blind in something else.

Questions people ask