Nereya Otieno shares her recipe for homemade chicken stock, while ruminating on the alchemical nature of time.

Part of What Time Tells, an ongoing series on time and the problems we face today. Published in conjunction with Countering Time, AAA’s exhibition about archival time and the idea of afterlives.

In defiance of modern food writing, I’m going to give you a recipe straight from the jump. No dithering for you to harriedly scroll through—that will come later. Here’s how I make chicken stock:

1. Get two one-gallon freezer bags.

2. When preparing meals, toss the odds-and-ends of veggies in one: carrot tops, celery ends, onion butts and outer skins, squash that’s a little too soft, corn cobb cores, etc. In the other, save chicken bones from finished meals—also any removed fat and skin. Keep both bags in the freezer, adding to them as your culinary life unfolds.

3. When the bags are full or you feel you have enough, toss it all in a big stock pot and cover it with water. Leave about an inch at the top. Throw in a couple garlic cloves, bay leaves, and some whole peppercorns (no salt!). Bring to a boil.

4. Cover, lower heat, and let simmer for 6–12+ hours. Add water periodically when it drops below the ingredients.

5. Ensure those 6–12+ hours are spent with a consciousness of the stock. Keep it somewhere in your thoughts. Hovering over the pot is not necessary, but continuous awareness of the stock is.

6. After the minimum 6 hours and until your desired flavour profile, let cool slightly and strain through a sieve into freezable containers. Discard the stock ingredients—compost is best. Store in the refrigerator or freezer if not using within the week.

Why am I sharing a recipe on chicken stock? The clear answer is also a question: Why not? “Each one, teach one,” as they say. But it’s also because I find the art of stock-making a generative reprieve from adulthood bleh. Focusing on something so mundane that it inverts a sense of mundanity. Some may deem it hyperbolic, but stock-making is a form of generous exaltation.

Of life. Of nourishment. Of idolising idle time and the fruits it typically bears.

Step five is crucial to the integrity of the stock. The simple act of monitoring hot water is also an exercise in rumination and recognition. Stock-making, when done correctly, is an active practice, not a passive chore. It is done alongside, not in the background of. A primary activity. The aim is to luxuriate in the time spent, to soak oneself in the unpressured tedium of the day. Stock-making does not help the time pass, it harnesses the passage of time.

Striving to manipulate time seems to be a pillar of contemporary society. Productivity is hero, while time plays pesky obstacle. Defying the evidence of time is worthy of reward. Capitalistic context creeps into colloquialisms: spending time. As if it were a tradeable commodity (it isn’t), or that one is entitled to a return on the investment (they’re not). Within the world of stock-making, however, that point of view holds no water. Here, time’s self-paced progression is the spectacle, observed in quiet admiration. It is an exercise in the phenomenon of existence, an appreciation for the ability to be in time instead of plumping the falsehood that we can control it.

^{Images: (1) Gaze upon your prepared ingredients. Quietly hum “Everything In Its Right Place“ by Radiohead. (2) Fresh garlic, bay leaves, and peppercorn mingle with a culinary tundra of frozen veggies and bones. All images courtesy of Nereya Otieno.}

12:00

A mind can wander to a great deal of intriguing places while overseeing stock. A peculiar flux occurs when one allows themselves to simply exist in time. Not moving it forward, not slowing it down. Just being temporal, time as it is.

I’m writing this piece while in that flux, spending my weekend with my own old bones boiling. Thoughts will come alongside the soft, constant hiss of gas from my stove and the occasional clatter of a lid as steam frees itself from the pot—an account of stock-induced wanderings and wonderings. This is in real time, though it is also already in your past. Which is perfect in a way because time is subversive and time, sometimes called “patience,” is an essential ingredient to chicken stock.

I’ve just dumped the contents of my two freezer bags (one whole chicken carcass, seven thigh bones, seven pieces of skin, many onion butts, two celery bunch hearts, a handful of green onion stems, cut potato pieces that started growing eyes, a mound of carrot peelings, the top of an eggplant) and tossed in two garlic cloves, three bay leaves, and a sprinkle of peppercorn into a 6-quart Dutch oven.

I am giddy at the knowledge of what is about to transpire. The melding of these ingredients will soon—steadily, but surely—elevate the air in my apartment to a rich bouquet of umami and aromatics. A multi-course feast for the olfactory senses riding on the gentle heat emanating from my stovetop will waft through my home. Hints of garlic and onion dance with earthy carrot and spicy pepper all atop deepening base notes of poultry and fat. Slowly my whole home becomes a scented altar to the bubbling concoction. At various moments, other culinary actors might come into momentary, hyper nasal-focus—reminding me of those stalks of crisp celery. I know my neighbours will be jealous and teased by sudden pangs of Pavlovian hunger. I am not above saying this brings me joy. I am waiting to inhale.

12.15

This method of making stock is truly alchemical. Sure, one could pack a pressure cooker with fresh produce and newly butchered cuts of chicken, intact and untouched flesh still on the bone. But that would be to skip out on the sorcery. By gathering the discarded trimmings of the past, otherwise relegated to the title of “waste,” one pauses the decaying process. In fact, it is reversed. What was heading to the scrapyard is now the highlight of the factory floor.

Stock made from remnants of other meals starts to bend time, fold it. It creates a consumable echo. The time spent stewing these ingredients together is a catalyst for connecting memories of the past (old food scraps) with promises for the future (broth for tomorrow’s dishes).

The wait is necessary. If all the same ingredients were boiled for just an hour, you’d have slightly flavoured water. That’s not stock and it won’t add much of anything to a dish. But wait—patiently and in good faith—and eventually an entirely novel entity emerges that will be an integral building block for something new. If that something new is a meal shared in communion with others, as most enjoyable meals are, the simmering of the stock is the first step in summoning people together. It is the catalyst for a future dish that might compel you to call up friends and lovers. I, personally, begin projecting the care I will give others as soon as the whoosh of a gas burner comes aflame. My immediate now is also entirely focused on tomorrow.

I take great comfort in the fact that something I ate Tuesday can nourish my friend on Sunday.

^{Images: (1) Ingredients posing before they are submerged in water. (2) Cooking is science is sorcery is bubbly—a sign of action beneath the surface. (3) When I was a teenager, a middle-aged man was telling me about Mai Tai cocktails. He said to me “the murkier, the better.“ I don't know if that holds for the beverage, but it certainly does for good and gelatinous stock. (4) Three hours in: the reward begins to take shape; but it is still many, many minutes away. (5) After resting overnight and coming back to a boil, now is the time to cool and strain this stock. Note how, without the simmering, the surface of the liquid is becoming taut. An additional flavourful dermis next to that glorious-looking chicken skin.}

13:00

I have taken bags of chicken bones with me to some unusual places. I’ve checked them into the coatroom at a club. Brought them to a bowling alley. One time to the movies. A fair few times to bars. It’s often an interesting conversation with the doorman. (“Do you always travel with a graveyard?,” “Don’t make this a habit and don’t tell anyone I let you in with that,” and “You’re just like my nana.”) Listen: When I go out after a delicious gathering among friends and family, I won’t let those bones go to waste. We’ve all got our peccadilloes.

13:22

Stock-making is a way of squeezing time dry. Harvesting every morsel of life, effort, and resource that transpired to get it there. The months it took to grow the produce and raise the chickens. The years it took the butcher to learn to slaughter. Every hand that was involved in transporting ingredients from gestation to your kitchen: farmers, harvesters, truck drivers, shelf stockers. The evening it took to cook the chicken the first time. The foresight to collect the remnants and end cuts of past sustenance. The days the bones have been keeping in the freezer.

Making stock gives new life to items perceived already exhausted. It honours the work of both people and earth by saying, “There’s plenty more here, we can go another round.” I, for one, am flattered when someone realises my potential.

13.38

Much of modern life is intended to propel time forward as quickly as possible. We march through our quotidian tasks to better tussle with IMPORTANT THINGS. The act of penning a note is often done hastily, a quick scribbling of a to-do. Watch a child write and they aren’t rushed, they’re observant. Of their hand and the paper and the trail of the graphite as it moves across the page. Of course, a child is learning so their attention is heightened. But they are learning a skill—a skill that most adults don’t recognise as something they themselves have mastered.

These tiny, small acts help shape how we show up in the world. How we fold our clothes. How we wash our dishes. The order in which we dress ourselves. Our method for ordering at the local cafe. These were learned actions that are classified as quotidian. I take that back. They’re not classified at all, really. They’re all quite overlooked as just something that happens while going from point A to point B. But they really are acts we’ve practiced and practiced and practiced to a point of mastery. We all have nuances to the acts that make up our lives. If Eric Clapton has a signature way of playing guitar, I think we can have a signature way of putting on socks—however subtle.

The time spent making stock, that step five in the recipe, is the time to recognise the quotidian as the magnificent. To shine a spotlight on it. To bathe in it without contemplating an agenda. In this way, stock-making provides the time to honour your gifts you’ve practiced all your life. To bring them to the fore, adorn the pedestal. Make a spectacle of the ordinary. Go ahead, write a note. Do it slowly. The bones will wait for you if you wait for them.

^{Video: Can you smell the comforting scent of past resourcefulness and future feasts wafting through?}

14:00

A non-exhaustive list of why homemade stock is superior to store bought:

• Exact knowledge of ingredients/allergens

• Truly no sodium, add salt to suit personal taste and health needs

• Makes homes smell delectable

• Scientific opportunity to test effects of past meals on stock flavour (BBQ’d vs baked chicken bones, do notes of that Mediterranean marinade persist?)

• Excellent use of the restaurant grade takeout containers that aren’t always recyclable

• Feeling self-sufficient when straining into a large rustic mason jar

• Fair trade with a bread-making friend

• Hits all three of the Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle

• Provides an excuse for staying home if needed

15:18

A friend just stopped by to pick up a sweatshirt he’d left. I shared what I’m writing here, the theme of it. We got to talking about how time is a metric for many things, but there is no real metric for time except for time. It defines itself. It just is. Which reminded me of this excerpt from David Foster Wallace’s short story “Good Ol’ Neon”:

Except if time is really passing, how fast does it go? At what rate does the present change? See? Meaning if we use time to measure motion or rate—which we do, it’s the only way you can—95 miles per hour, 70 heartbeats a minute, etc.—how are you supposed to measure the rate at which time moves? One second per second? It makes no sense. You can’t even talk about time flowing or moving without hitting up against paradox right away.

But there is a way in which we can measure and define time by something other than itself, at least in the culinary world. Taste. Taste is a way to measure time. In a rudimentary way, it could be how palettes mature. A toddler’s hate for all things green and earthen will become a delight later in life. Broccoli didn’t change, aging was the only factor. “You’ll like it when you’re older.” In a more critical sense, time is often measured by the calibre of taste. The aging of meat. The fermentation of produce. The distillation of a liquor. Certain taste is only evidenced by a patience in preparation, the passing of time. The simmering of a stock.

We quantify these things in relation to time out of habit. But we could quantify time in relation to these things. How long is the flight? One traditional tonkotsu ramen stock-making. How old is your daughter? When parmesan cheese begins to crumble. Taste may not be exacting, but it is a consistent and reliable measure of time.

The absence of time is also marked by taste. Baby spinach. Tender lamb versus seasoned mutton. Chicken plumped quickly with hormones and injected with water for size then boiled quickly to a tough and tasteless consistency. That chicken tastes differently from the one allowed to mature naturally before being slaughtered—in an environment governed by natural light—then marinated and cooked slowly over low heat, basting itself in its own natural juices. The taste gives an understanding of the time. It contextualises it. Would they be units of umami or deliciousness? I’m not sure what would be most accurate, but there are certifiable levels of satisfactory dopamine released.

17:28

As an adjacent aside about metrics and time: I heard on a podcast somewhere that our understanding of prayer as cornerstone to most activities in the past is somewhat misguided. When an apothecary provided a tincture and instructed someone to recite thirty Hail Marys, it could have been to honour and invoke the Christian God. But, it was also very likely that reciting thirty Hail Marys would take roughly ten minutes, upon which the effects of the concoction might take hold. Useful in the time before the wristwatch.

18:00

Making stock is one of my most choice things to do when hungover or in a seemingly inescapable state of meh. When all I want is for the day to pass but am embarrassed at the shell of a person I am in the process. When I’m searching for any redeeming quality about myself. Stock-making erases my shame by providing an aspect of productivity. Am I laying on the couch? Yes. Is it 2pm and have I barely moved? Yes. Am I overseeing the creation of something sustainable, healthy, and delicious as an investment in my future? Yes.

I may be impaired, but I am preparing.

18:23

I’m not hungover now. Just saying.

19:17

Susan Sontag once said, “Time exists so that everything doesn’t happen at once. Space exists so it doesn’t all happen to you.” Or something like that. Which is why stock demands time. There is no such thing as a flash stock, it can’t happen in an instant. Regarding space, I suggest a very big pot. And perhaps a collection of people who can let the stock happen to them, too. A group of unique gullets to carry the story of your stock further. Where you gather them is up to you, as long as they’re there. You summoned them as soon as the ingredients began simmering, you’ll recall.

^{Images: (1) A mandala of bones, fat, and skin. (2) Recognise their potential.}

19:48

One of my favourite verses by Yasiin Bey, back when he was still known as Mos Def, is one where he personifies time. It’s his feature on “Hurricane,” the eponymous song by The Roots for the biopic starring Denzel Washington. The film tells the true story of a Black boxer who was wrongly imprisoned for a triple murder in a heavily racially motivated verdict. He served almost twenty years before he was exonerated of the crime. In his verse to contextualise the reality of this act, Yasiin embodies the omnipotence of time, the magnificence and consequence of it.

Yes, I am the inescapable, the irresistible
The unnegotiable, the unchallenged [who dat?]
I am time
I scroll in measurements, control the elements
I hold the evidence, I tell the story [say what?]
I am time
I know no prejudice, I bear no sentiments
For wealth or settlement, I move forward [who you?]
I am time
You can’t recover me, conceal or smuggle me
Retreat or run from me, crawl up or under me
You can't do much for me besides serve
Me well and have good dividends returned to you
Or attempt to kill me off and have me murder you
Many have wasted me but now they are facing me
Treated me unfaithfully and now endure me painfully
Plaintively, I wait to see what history will shape to be
Whose hearts will never die inside the sake of me
Angels scribe the page for me
Keep a full account of all the names for me
And make a special mark for Hurricane, the hurricane.

This track has nothing to do with food or cooking or chicken stock, I just appreciate it deeply. The clever truths he offers about time that we often trick ourselves into thinking are suggestions. I listen to this track when I’m making my stocks and contemplate the unflappability of time. I’m playing it now. Anyone alive probably should, too. Listening to music is an ideal way to make chicken stock. Music listening is a method of investing in time, not spending it. Music, like chicken stock, is an exercise in time travel. All tenses—past/present/future—converge and divide over and over. And there you are, in the thick of it all, hanging on to whichever dimension best becomes the moment.

21:56

I often indulge my radical side and leave my stock overnight. I turn off the stove and momentarily crack the lid to observe the way the murky colour clouds around the vegetables and pools of iridescent oils swirl on the surface. Then I go about my evening, letting the stewing morsels commingle without the incessant poke of a rolling bubble. I am reassured by their resting after a long day’s work.

The next day starts like this: I open my eyes, I groggily stumble to the kitchen, turn the appropriate burner back on, drink water, wash my face, lotion my body, put on pants, and check my phone. By this time the stock has come back to a boil and I turn it to a low simmer for another hour. Then I turn it off and let it cool.

I think I’m about to do that now: turn it off for the night and go about my evening. Later I will slumber under the blanket of its rich, delicious scent.

22:07

Make sure homemade stock always comes back to a boil, though. On the topic of time, botulism is something that will cut yours short.

08:44 [next day: face just washed, body just lotioned]

Could evolution be considered slow cooking? Time as anthropomorphic chef? The slow addition of new ingredients, chemical breakdowns of older ingredients, acids and alkali and proteins mixing, bonds forming, liquids coagulating and emulsifying, chemistry creating physical and structural change. The end result is impacted and determined by the environment it’s being cooked in—a tandoori oven is a desert is a sous vide is a jungle is an ice bath is above 66° N latitude.

9:30

My grandfather has been a constant thought throughout this current bout of stock. He unexpectedly passed away recently. As the comforting scent of chicken begins to fill my home once again, I find myself building towards some grief-induced fury. I am desperately, almost pathetically, wishing that these bones were from a meal I shared with him. How glorious and redemptive it would be if something that had been in his hands were contributing to the taste being teased in this pot. But it’s impossible. He lived some 2,000 miles away from me and though I’ve brought bones to strange places, I’ve never taken them on an airplane.

Though, if I had, I would freeze some of this stock and mark it with a secret code. I would never use it for a recipe but instead scrape flakes of the frozen substance every so often and let them melt on my tongue. I would use a tiny portion when making a meal for my aunt to give her a little time with her father once again. I would feel deliriously lucky that a meal he had shared with me was never truly over.

10:01

Want a suggestion of what to use your stock for? Make David Lynch’s quinoa. Just substitute broth for water and skip his bouillon cube.

^{Image: Ready for gifting, the refrigerator, or the freezer. Not all heroes wear capes.} 

10:13

When it’s finished and I’m straining into my containers, I get a similar feeling to when I prepare lunches for children. I get excited by the proximity of the future’s possibilities. My mind is electric with potential scenarios as I ready the nourishment to get a young child through the day. I’m anticipating their bodily needs as well as their social capital. I’m thinking about them sitting down with their friends during a well-deserved break from the classroom and the sustenance they’ll have as the centrepiece to that half hour of freedom and camaraderie. By making a meal they have yet to eat, I’m believing they’ll get to lunchtime.

It’s the same when I’m straining my stock into containers. Now that I’ve made the stock, the use of it is inevitable. So, what’s going to happen? Who will it be shared with? How will it be used? What will that meal lead to?

As I said yesterday, the simple making of the stock has already begun the task of summoning people together. The answers of when and who and how…only time will tell. But I’m patient. As Yasiin said of time, all one can do is serve it well. In a bowl is as good a place as any.

Nereya Otieno is a writer and non-profit founder. She focuses on intercultural spaces and the ways in which music, food, and the arts build communities. Her essay “A Sense of Smørrebrød” garnered a spot on the Notable list for Best American Food Writing 2021. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times Image Magazine, Hyperallergic, Architectural Digest, Okayplayer, Okayafrica, Whetstone Magazine, and more.

All images courtesy of Nereya Otieno.