Homemade Chicken Broth – Easy, Frugal, Freeze!

After roasting two chickens – one for dinner and one for a meal the next day – I had two glorious chicken carcasses just waiting for a hot bath to become chicken stock. Making chicken stock is so incredibly easy and it is soup-er tasting, much better than the packaged stuff from the store. And it’s so thrifty – because you’re using every part of the chicken!

Here’s how we’ve made chicken stock before:

Homemade Chicken Broth – Easy, Frugal, Freeze!

 

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Author: Heather

Recipe type: Soup

Ingredients

• Leftover roasted chicken bones, carcass (basically everything leftover) - These don’t have to be homemade roasted chickens – you can use the carcass from store bought rotisserie chickens, too! See my post about roasting chickens.
• Five (5) carrots
• Five (5) celery stalks
• One (1) onion, quartered
• Two (2) bay leaves
• Parsley, fresh or dried
• A couple whole garlic cloves (or not, if you don’t like it)
• Water
• Salt, pepper to taste

Instructions

1. In a large stock pot throw in all things chicken – the carcass, the bones, leftover skin – it doesn’t matter what it looks like, we are going to strain it out later.
2. Roughly chop carrots, celery, onion – throw into pot with chicken
3. Add parsley, bay leaves and garlic to pot
4. Fill pot with water, enough to cover everything inside – plus add more. It will cook down throughout the process.
5. Bring water to a roaring boil. Then turn down to a low, low simmer.
6. Find something else to do for four to six hours, while it simmers on the stove. I cleaned bathrooms, exciting huh?
7. Let it simmer for as much as eight (8) hours on the stove.
8. As it simmers you can skim off any “scum” from the top of the water. I mostly notice this at the beginning. Some people suggest you can skim off the oils and fats from the top – but I think this adds a lot of flavor and I say don’t waste your time – it will be much easier to skim off when it cools, if you’d like.
9. Now it’s time to strain out the chunks. Set a colander over another pan, large enough to hold your stock. Line the colander with cheese cloth and pour your stock into the colander. The cheese cloth should catch nearly everything, leaving you with chicken stock!
10. Freeze in air tight containers until you’re ready to use, or use next day for making soup or any recipe requiring chicken stock.

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