Rich in vital minerals, glucosamine, chondroitin and gelatin, bone broths are nutritional powerhouses. They’re inexpensive to make, richly nutritive and deeply flavorful. We try to incorporate broth into our daily diet for its many benefits. The cider vinegar used in this recipes helps to release more minerals from the bones.
This version of bone broth makes use of the leftovers from a roast chicken. Other broths can be made using whole, raw chicken.
To make approximately ½ gallon of chicken stock, you’ll need the following:
- 1 Leftover Roast Chicken Carcass (try Perfect Roast Chicken or Roast Chicken with Prosciutto & Herbs)
- Vegetable Scraps (celery leaves, onion trimmings, carrot peels, garlic etc)
- 2 Bay Leafs
- 1 Tablespoon Cider Vinegar
Instructions:
- Pick the chicken carcass clean of useable meat and reserve that for another dish (like Asian Lettuce Wraps with Garlic Scapes).
- Add the chicken carcass, vegetable scraps and bay leafs to a crockpot.
- Pour filtered water over the carcass to cover.
- Add cider vinegar.
- Cook in your slow cooker on low heat for 24-hrs or longer.
- By adding water to the cooker, you can continue to cook the broth until the chicken bones become flexible and rubbery.
- Strain the broth through a fine mesh sieve and pour into mason jars.
- The broth should gel, but it is not necessary.
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I know my mother makes her stock in her pressure cooker and it takes much less time. I’ve never made stock. And I’m afraid of pressure cookers. But I’m willing to step up and give it a try with the next carcass that comes my way. Probably (ducking and running here) from Costco.
Check out The Runaway Lawyer’s last post: ‘Hand of God’ rock being sold on eBay.
I steer away from pressure cookers. I read that the high pressure and heat denature the proteins, so I don’t really use them. It’s too bad, really, cause two summers ago I dropped down $110 on a pressure canner and now I’m too spooked to use it this summer. Oh well. I bet it has a decent resell value.
We use 2-4 roaster chickens a month…. when it’s bee picked over I toss it in a zip lock in my freezer…. every couple month I use my HUGE tamale pot, 5-7 carcasses, a bag of carrots, onions and celery…. also a few old herbs that are dying in my vegie drawer. I find it’s important to bring it to a boil, then turn down to low for hours and hopurs…. the hardest part is draining and cooling this large amount of stock. I measure it into quart zip freezer bags…. lay them FLAT on a cooking sheet and put them in my large freezer. I always have fresh stock!!… HUGE money saver for me too!
I have been making my broths for awhile using this method and the last several times I have made it my broth has not gelled. I have been wondering if I am not cooking it long enough? I usually do it on the stove on low for at least 24 hours. Am I still getting the same benefits if it is not getting jelly like?
I am making the broth right now, but not only with two roasted chicken carcasses. I have thrown in about 6 or so chicken feet. From what I hear THAT is what makes it jell. My chickens are pastured raised of course…as are the funky feet. My husband and oldest daughter both made an attempt at colds last week and drank up my last batch of broth. Colds stopped in their tracks! (I added coconut oil to theirs along with some garlic.) Thanks for this site!
Ha cool! I just cooked a chicken and am making broth now. Came in to check my emails and here I am! Thanks for the tips – I never used cider vinegar before. Just went out and added some.
I’ve found that when I make my bone broth in the crockpot it doesn’t gell. But if I do it on the stove top for 5 or 6 hours then it does gell. I think that the crockpot cooks it too long and hot (even when on low) and that breaks down the gelatin. I roasted a chicken last night and picked it clean. Today I’ll do a stove top bone broth.
Living in upstate New York where we heat with wood much of the year, I cook my broth over the woodstove where it can simmer away during the day and overnight. I then put it out on the porch to cool. Doing it this way I can “stock” up on stock in the freezer for the months when I don’t want to make stock on the wood stove or on my electric stove. A real energy saver!
Karen -
Thank you for sharing your experiences with woodstove cooking. We used to have a woodstove in our last condo, and it was a wonderful way to keep the home warm, the food hot and our energy consumption low. I truly hope that our next home has one.
- Jenny
I have never tried making stock in the crockpot before; I always make it on the stove. This was perfect this weekend because we had a busy day yesterday and I could just have my stock cooking while we were out.
I’m totally new to this, so forgive my ignorance….but is the whole things supposed to gel? Or is the solidified part supposed to rise to the top, then you pull it off? If the whole thing gels, how do you use it in a recipe? I made turkey stock for thanksgiving, & i thought it tasted too oily, and nothing ever gelled, but I did have lots of floaty bits throughout the whole thing.
Can I cook my chicken in the crockpot and still do the stock afterwards? Or will that not work? I get fabulous broth doing it in the crockpot, but I’m guessing all the good stuff for the stock may be gone by the time the chicken’s done. What do you think?
My host for Thanksgiving let me take home the turkey bones/carcass, and a lot of the scraped off turkey meat and fat that other “normal” people who aren’t real foodies don’t like to eat. I am making turkey stock in my crockpot in my dorm room as we speak. Now it’s time for me to sleep off all of that turkey and cornbread! So delicious.
I just made this in my crockpot, but with the turkey carcass. It totally worked!
Meagan, that’s great! Now you have a beautiful, nourishing broth to take home. I need to make some broth today, too. I swear I could eat that stuff at every meal (and often do!)
Hi Jenny, I have been using this stock recipe for months. Thank you! It was your roast chicken recipe that got me started on real, pastured chicken roasting and stock making. Anyways, my question is this: should I use all the extras from the bag to make my stock (neck, giblets, etc)? You don’t mention it above so I am wondering. Thank you! Nancy in CA
I’ve always made my stock like this, but I’ve only let it cook for 12 hours. I would have never imagined I could cook it to the point the bones were rubbery. I made your baked chicken tonight, so bones will go in the pot tomorrow morning along with my veggie scraps.
Thanks!
Can you freez the left over veggie scraps till you are ready to make the broth?
I freeze all the veggie scraps, peels, stuff almost going bad but not quite (can never seem to use every stalk of celery
to use later. Then I never use “good” veggies for the broth but the broth still gets the nutrients. Usually a winter’s worth of scraps is enough for all stock making for the year (in the summer I add the scraps to the compost pile- can’t always get to it in winter)
As for turning to gel- mine usually does. I do it on the stove (though I’m going to try the crock pot next time) for 12-24 hours. I boil mine way down mainly so it doesn’t take up as much space. i can dilute a bit depending on what I am making but I freeze some in ice cube trays and some in 8-14 oz batches in ziplocks. I always toss a broth cube in when I’m making pasta or rice. Pasta won’t stick together and it soaks up all the goodies.
I’ve never added vinegar but I use it for so much else- why not?
A question:
After we get done with the crockpot and run it through the sieve…Are we supposed to put it in the fridge to cool down and the fat to rise to the top to skim? All the other recipes talk about that but not yours. I am assuming its the same thing right?
Thanks!
Holly
Homemade stock is great stuff! I have a tip I found years ago (I wish I could remember the source) that has been wildly useful for me:
When starting the stock, keep track of how many cups of water you’ve used. After cooking the stock for hours and straining it and all that, return it to the pot and boil it down until there’s not much left and it’s pretty gel-ly. This part is kind of tricky to get exact, but you want enough left that you can fill an ice-cube tray such that each cube corresponds to the amount of water you added in the beginning. Really, if you boil it down to a bit less than that, that’s fine because the cubes will just be more flavorful. What I do is this: if I used 8 cups of water, I fill eight ice cube spaces with water from the faucet, then pour it into a container to eyeball how much liquid it is. Then I eyeball the stock and just try to get it close. It takes some practice but after doing it a few times, I get very close.
When you’ve boiled the stock down, let it cool (doesn’t take long since there’s not much liquid left), then pour into the ice cube tray. Freeze. Unmold the cubes of reduced stock and store in a freezer bag; because of the high gelatin content, these will have kind of a mushy texture if you don’t freeze them long/low enough, and if you don’t freeze them enough, they can get stuck together in the bag. It takes a full 24 hours, even in my very good freezer, to get them solid enough.
Now, whenever you need stock, simply take out a cube and add a cup of water. This saves a LOT of space.
I found some ice-cube trays that are made of silicone, so they are very flexible for unmolding (also saves you the hassle of the stock cubes getting slightly mushy), and they also happen to be perfectly square, which is just cool-looking.
You can freeze egg whites in these too, one per cube, and save in freezer bags, which is nice if you’ve been making yolk-heavy recipes and don’t want to waste the whites. I also freeze food scraps for vermicomposting after I’ve run them through the food processor. Freezing stuff in ice cube trays works for a lot of stuff.
Oh, one thing I wanted to add… I suspect that chicken stock in a crock pot does not appear to gel as much as chicken stock on a stovetop simply because crock pots are designed to not lose any moisture, whereas even many good stovetop pots will lose some moisture when covered. I make all my stock in the crockpot, and it isn’t obviously gel-ly until I strain it and start to boil it down. So I can attest that crockpot stock does have the gelatin in it. I used to make it on the stovetop, but it required too much fussing and checking. I remember it having a more obvious gel, though, but no more gel after I purposely strained and reduced it. So I would guess both methods produce the same amount of gelatin.
Could you use the carcass from a ready cooked BBQ chook from the shop?
Absolutely. I have one in the pot at this moment. I get a cold, end-of-the-day-buy-me-now BBQ chicken (at reduced price), strip off the larger parts whole and save for other dishes. Simmer the carcass with the veggies & experiment with herbs. You do need to make sure that the BBQ flavor supplied by the market is one that you want. I admit to being a beginner at this as I did no cooking prior to retiring, while my wife was still working, and my methods may not be too refined.