Chicken stock

[ellasmum]

Hi..

I am attempting to make DD's food myself but being a pretty cr&&y chef I am a bit clueless. Attempted to make chicken stock from Annabel Karmel's receipe and it turned out to be all fat and no liquid - followed the receipe to the letter but am guessing not enough water to start with.

Anyway, was wondering if I can use her receipes with packet chicken stock or do they have too much salt in?? Has anyone done this? Am I being too anal??

I've done it with the Knorr cubes - absolutely tasted fine to me and dd still alive so even if there was too much salt it didn't kill her straight off !!

Can never be bothered with boiling carcasses myself - EUGHHHH !!

Also - sorry forgot to say - have also bought readymade stock from Tesco (chill cabinet near the meat/chicken etc) and that was fine too - I can cope with someone else boiling bones - ie. not in my house !!

Thanks Scatterbrain - I agree about the smell, also cutting the damn chicken up into bits is a nightmare.

Oooh, I must disagree- I love a boiling carcass, me! Got quite upset at seeing fab roast chicken bones being discarded while eating at my daddy's this weekend!

Sure the salt won't harm dd, though, ellasmum.

They sell a reduced salt, vegetable stock in Tesco's, Marigold Swiss Bouillion. That might cut out a lot of the salt if you're still worried.

scummy, I'm so sad I freeze chicken bones till I've got enough to make a massive load of stock. And I love the smell

Enid and Scummymummy - don't suppose you want to make me some stock???!!!!

Ellasmum, I think just about every supermarket sells the ready-made stock now which is good but expensive. I tried that for a while but then went back to an oxo cube and to 'beef' it up a bit I used to put some of our leftover gravy from the Sunday roast in the stock as it's always yummy and keeps for a good few days in the fridge.

ellasmum, you can get organic stock cubes, in loads of flavours, I think they have less salt in than the others too.

I just use water - for most of the recipes I don't think it makes that much difference.

The Marigold is the best, even Nigella uses it!

I make my own stock but not necessarily from carcasses. It's not quite the same but I sometimes use skinned chicken breasts, a lot less fatty. If your not worried about the clarity of the stock, add in some of the veg and meat whizzed up via a processor. If the stock cube is not liquid enough add water to it to make it soupier (is there such a word!). If your worried about the fat content how about making vegetable stock. As florenceuk says water is often fine in arecipe anyway.

Ellasmum
I'm sure your dd will survive without homemade chicken stock I'm afraid that's something I've relegated to the 'things i had time to do on maternity leave' category!!

I sometimes use low salt vegetable stock cubes(beware that organic does not necessarily mean lower salt - check the packet) although I think it is still a bit salty for comfort. Otherwise I just add a few herbs to make stuff a bit tastier (ds is 10 months).

I was always led to believe from my cookbooks that stock cubes should not be used in cooking for children under 1 year of age, because of the salt level.

I never made stock, just added water where stock was needed. Herbs and garlic give flavour to the meals. Couldn't be ar**ed to make chicken stock from scratch - blooming Annabel Karmel. She makes us all feel like we should be making Chicken meatballs left right and centre. Yes, some of her recipes are good, but all new foods are taste exposions to babies, and so it is just important to give a wide variety of tastes.

Ellasmum - you're not being anal, just enthusiastic to give your dd a good start in life. I was exactly the same, and used to get really fed up with being in the kitchen every night trying to make a wide variety of foods to put in the freezer for my ds. Even now I worry that my 15 month old ds is not getting 5 portions of fruit/veg, enough calcium (he hates all milk), fish oils, iron etc etc every day. My dh says that I should just think of all the babies who are fed on fish fingers, crisps and sweets, and to stop beating myself up over it. (No offence to any mums who do this obviously!)

It's a good job that no-one tells you how much hard work babies are, otherwise the population would shrink rapidly!

I was very careful not to give my son any extra salt up until 8 months when he started nursery three days a week. They gave him marmite on toast aned weetabix amongst other products with added salt, so I decided to relax a little and add the reduced salt Marigold to some of his food. Cheese has salt in it.

Actually Ellasmum, when you said it was "all fat and no liquid" did you mean it was a kind of jelly-like substance? Chicken fat when it cools is white. The jelly stuff is stock - when you heat it up again it liquifies, so you can still use it (maybe water it down a bit).

So does bread. Its hard to get a balance between feeding babies the way you are told is good for them, and trying to get them onto something resembling a normal diet! This the main reason we have failed miserably so far to give ds bits of our meals. I've decided to be a lot more relaxed about the salt in foods - just not to add any more to it - even stuff like tinned fish has added salt, but its the only way he gets his omega 3s.... ho hum.

OK - I am officially a sh*t cook and my child is destined to eat pureed veg for the rest of her life.

Last night attempted to do a bloody AK receipe using ready made stock and it was so salty I couldn't even think about giving it to DD - so am going to do as several of you suggested and add water instead.

Infact today I just pureed a chicken breast and am going to mix in with some veg already pureed - I am sick of following all of these receipes.

It seems like ages away until she will be able to eat 'normal' food.

You're right about the bread, Elliot. We make all our own bread (bread machine user, not domestic goddess/superwoman ) and it's surprising how salty I now find bought bread (we only use one teaspoon per loaf - you need some to control the yeast or something like that).

I fed both my kids a lot of our food when they were babies, but we don't use salt in cooking hardly at all, so it wasn't too much of a problem.

ellasmum - use water! Or do what I did and use very dilute Marigold - I did buy the salt free one for a while but then gave up and used the normal stuff. Ready made stock that you buy in cartons is horrendously salty, even I don't like it.

I only bother to make stock as I am very cheeseparing when it comes to waste...I agree that making stock from scratch simply for baby food really is the limit...I always think AK only adds that to make it look like a 'real' cookbook.

Bobbins - yes, you are right about foods already having salt in, and my hv said that it was ok to give tinned spaghetti etc from 8 months, as long as you don't give that sort of thing at every meal. My ds had weetabix from 6 months, but I gave him other toast toppings than Marmite until he was nearer 1 year old.

However, adding stock cubes is different. The thing is not to add UNNECESSARY salt to cooking. My ds is 15 months, and I still do not add any stock cubes to his food. I sometimes add Worcestershire Sauce because of the flavour, but very little, and he is old enough for a bit more salt now. Stock cubes or powders are unnecessary to baby food IMO. Things like cheese add flavour, protein and calcium to meals as well as salt, and you would probably never use enough in one baby portion to give too much salt.

Aaagghhh - having such a sh*t day. Spent ages pureeing chicken etc,, and DD refused to touch it, just screamed and had tears rolling down her face - clearly she thinks a lot of my cooking!!!

She refused everything I gave her - even the plain veg that I know she loves. Both of us ended up in tears and I threw a pot of pureed peach across the room - how mature!!! She then glugged down loads of milk.

Does their appetite / desire for solids change when they are teething - which I think she is at the moment??

Mine always went compeltely off her food when teething, would literally hardly eat anything for 2-3 days.
PS If it makes you feel any better, after a particularly frustrating number of days with my daughter not eating (not due to teething) I got a spoonful of yogurt and flicked it on her face (bad mother!!!!!). She looked quite surprised but not upset and I started laughing and so did she, we all lose it some days!

Janus - am laughing v. loudly at that. The vision
of DD with yoghurt all down her face is hilarious

I got so fed up with DS1 not eating anything I'd cooked that I mainly made single purees and mixed them up afterwards.

Pureed salmon plus pureed spinach plus mashed potato plus cheese sauce = "Salmon Florentine a la SoupDragon" Sustitute the spinach for assorted veg and you get salmon fishcakes with mixed vegetables.

I can recommend AKs courgette and tuna lasagne though, it's delicious. I stopped cooking with salt and DSs had bits of what we were eating eventually.

I agree with what everyone's said - I made my own "stock" by just mixing an assortment of appropriate herbs/spices with water.

Make sure the meal is an appropriate temperature before flicking it at your baby's face - test it on your own first.