Basic Chicken Stock/Shredded Cooked Chicken

Why do Mexican recipes so often involve home-made chicken or pork stock? Believe me, it’s not because people go in for elaborate, time-consuming fonds de cuisine. The true reason is that the preferred everyday cooking method for chicken or pork — the two basic meats — is boiling. (All right, “poaching,” if that sounds better.) This means that cooks are often able to dip out a few ladlefuls from a pot with a chicken-in-progress and apply it to some other purpose, like thinning a mo