Chicken broth

November 12, 2009 at 3:02 pm · Filed under dinner, misc

I came to the conclusion recently that I wanted to make homemade chicken broth. It seemed daunting. A lot of food blogs have tackled this and they all have some “secret” that makes it the best broth on earth, and to try to cook broth any other way is going to taste terrible.

My only secret is that the crock pot is your friend.

This is definitely not an exact recipe sort of thing. You need chicken, veggies, spices/herbs, and water. That’s all.

Start with a whole roasted chicken. You can roast one yourself, but I cheated and used one of those rotisserie chickens from the grocery store.

Pull all the usable meat off the bones. I’m not a big dark meat fan, so I left some of that on the bone.

Put the chicken meat in a container and refrigerate for some other purpose (such as chicken soup!)

Place the chicken bones in the crock pot. Make sure to include the fat and skin and whatnot. You want it all.

Cut up a half bunch of celery (I discarded the leaves), a few carrots, an onion, and any other random veggies you want. I used a bell pepper, too. Throw them in crock pot.

Since it’s the end of the growing season for herbs, I went out and picked what was left of my various herbs. I think I had a few kinds of basil and some pineapple sage. I took them in and washed them thoroughly, and tossed them in the crock pot, too.

Then fill the crock pot to about 1/2 inch from the top with water (I used filtered water).

Turn the crock pot on low (if your chicken was cold, you might want to turn the crock pot on high for a few hours, if you can, just to get it up to safe meat temperature quickly).

I let the broth cook for at least 18 hours.

When I felt like it was done, I turned off the crock pot and let the broth sit for a while so it wasn’t too hot to handle. Then I used a big slotted spoon and took out the largest pieces of chicken/veggies. You’ll want to throw this stuff out, because it’s not going to be good for anything else. Then I strained it all through my big colander, and finally through my mesh sieve.

Then I put it back in the rinsed out crock pot and put the insert in the fridge until the next day (or just a few hours, is probably fine).

After it was completely chilled I just used my mesh sieve to skim off the fat from the top (or use a ladle and ladle the broth through the sieve).

And there I had it. Broth! You can add spices and salt/pepper now, or you can wait and add it depending on what recipe you’re using your broth for.

Separate the broth into freezer bags and freeze them flat.

Mmmmmmm.

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