In the past I have made a really great chicken stock in my pressure cooker/canner.
This was done using the following approach:
In the pressure canner I would place the following:
4lb Whole Chicken
4-5 Cups of water
1 tsp of salt
1/4 tsp of ground pepper
1/4 cup of diced carrot
1/3 cup of diced celery with leaves
1/3 cup of onion
1 tsp of thyme
1 tsp of parsley
1/4 tsp of oregano
1 garlic clove diced
Put all the ingredients into the pressure canner, close and seal it. Turn on the range to high heat, place weight regulator on top with the 15 lbs setting (you don't want to vent air for this process, only during canning). Once it was at 15 lbs of pressure reduce heat as needed to maintain pressure and pressure cook for 40 minutes. Turn off heat after the 40 minutes and allow to reduce pressure until zero. Remove regulator and open pressure cooker/canner.
The result was a chicken that was so tender it would fall apart and very delicious. After carefully removing the chicken pieces I dumped the remaining stock and pieces through a wire stainer.
This stock was very strong in flavor and I found myself reducing it by half with water to use for soups and other recipes.
Now to my next experiment and some questions I had. My next experiment is to use the pressure canner/cooker to make a Lamb Stock for eventual use as a consomme'
In procuring the materials for this I have come across a store that brings in whole high quality lamb carcasses from New Zealand. They butcher it at the store at the rate of one to two whole lambs per week into the chops, legs, etc. Every week they throw away the pelvis, neck, and sometimes when a customer asks for de-boned leg, they also have leg bone. I have asked the butcher to hold on to these pieces for me by bagging them in plastic and placing them in the freezer. He is going to talk to the head butcher and find out if they can just give them to me free of charge or at a greatly reduced rate, maybe $0.30 - 0.50 per pound. He should have around 15-20 lbs in 3 weeks.
Will these pieces produce good stock, particularly the neck and pelvises?
Should I break them up a little before pressure canning them? I have seen in old recipes for beef stock to hammer shine bones to "crack" them before making the stock
Should they be pre-roasted in the oven?
Should I add some actual lamb meat to the bones or will the neck have enough, if I add meat how much should I add?
In addition I was considering taking the following approach in regards to a recipe:
For 10 lbs of bones;
Olive Oil
1 lbs of chopped onion
1 badiane (star anise)
1.5 lbs of chopped carrot
1/2 lbs of chopped celery with leaves
1 lbs of chopped fresh tomatoes
1/4 lbs of shopped button mushrooms
15 cloves of garlic sliced thick
5 bay leaves
1 tbs of rosemary
2 tbs of thyme
1 tsp of parsley
0.5 grams of saffron
1 cup of rose wine
1 cup of white wine
18 lbs of water
Rub the bones with olive oil and roast in the oven at 350 for 40 minutes turning every 15 minutes.
Fry the onions for 10 minutes in a frying pan with a little olive oil while cooking the tomatoes in the pressure cooker for the same time. Add the onions to the pressure cooker. Fry the remaining vegetables for 20 minutes with a little olive oil in the frying pan while reducing the tomato/onions in the pressure cooker. Add the vegetables and remaining ingredients to the pressure cooker, close the lid and put the pressure regulator at the 15 lbs setting. Bring it up to pressure and keep it pressure cooking for 6 hours. Turn off heat and allow to cool to zero pressure. Stain through wire sieve with two layers of cheese cloth. Allow to cool in refrigerator overnight, skim fat from top.
After words I wanted to try and make some into consomme' per video instruction here on the Stella website.
Let me know your thoughts and if you think this is a good way to go for making lamb stock.