Homemade Chicken Stock Powder

I first read about making chicken stock powder from the Thermomix forum. There were many raves about Tenina's Chicken stock powder recipe in the For Food's Sake recipe book. Unfortunately it is very difficult to get hold of Thermomix recipe books in Singapore and I couldn't find the recipe for the stock powder anywhere. Hence, I decided to just experiment on my own with whatever information I could gather online, and came up with my own version of a stock powder.

I actually used the chicken carcass and jin hua ham left over from a liquid chicken stock together with some left over raw chicken pieces in the freezer. I often have meat left over from soups that nobody wants to eat as the meat has given all it's flavour to the soup and tends to be somewhat tough and flavourless. I think this would be a great way to make use of the leftover meat and minimise wastage.

The resulting powder seems like a good replacement for the usual stock cube and is completely made from natural ingredients, so I can use it in my cooking without worrying about feeding my kids MSG and other additives. I used some ingredients commonly used in Asian stocks/soups to make the stock powder more suited to Asian cooking though I'm sure you could use whatever ingredients you like create your own version of stock powder, just dehydrate and blend!

I don't have a precise recipe for this...but this is what I did...

1. Dehydrate ingredients in an oven until dry. For vegetables: 150°C for first 5-10 minutes, then about 100°C until dry. For meat: 230°Cfor 15-20 minutes till brown then 150°C until dry. In between I will remove any dry bits and also remove the meat from the bone and shred up into small pieces so it can dry faster. Be patient...once the items seem almost dry, you can switch off the oven and let the residual heat continue to dry the items out further.
2. Place everything in the thermomix and blend on speed 10 until you have a fine powder.

This is what I added into my stock powder:

• Chicken (about 1/2 a chicken)
• Jin Hua Ham (1 slice)
• Spring onions (about 1 small bunch)
• Onions (about 2 medium)
• Garlic (2-3 cloves)
• Dried Shitake mushrooms (2-3)
• Dried Scallops (2-3 medium/large)
• Salt (about 1 tsp)

It smells fantastic! When I add it into soups I don't really taste the stock powder or the individual ingredients in it, but it does seem to give the soup some depth and enhances the flavour.