Homemade Chicken Broth

Homemade chicken broth is one of the healtiest things you can make. It supplies a lot of minerals and gelatin into your diet. Not only that, but it tastes a lot bettter when making soups and sauces! I can truly taste the difference. This is also an inexpensive way of adding good minerals and vitamins into your diet. This has been a growing experience for me, since I don't necessarily like handling raw chicken. But, it's been such a wonderful part of our meals. It's well worth it!

Ingredients:

1 whole pasture raised chicken
4 quarts of cold water
2 Tbs vinegar
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 celery sticks, chopped
1 onion, chopped


I usually double this recipe, so that I only make stock every 2 weeks. I do this job in parts, to make things a little easier.

Part One: Prepare everything the night before. I cut out the chicken breast meat of the chicken and put it into a freezer baggie to save for later. I then cut off the wings and legs. I chop all of the veggies. I put it all in the fridge for the morning.

Part Two: Dump all of the chicken pieces and veggies into a large pot with the COLD water and vinegar. Let it sit for 1 hour. This is a crucial step. The vinegar actually pulls the minerals out of the bones in the cold water.

Part Three: Bring the stock to a boil and skim off any skum that raises to the top. Reduce heat and cook for a few hours.

Part Four: My personal preference is to take the chicken meat off of the bones at this point once the meat is fully cooked, but not overly cooked. I then save this dark meat in freezer bags to put into soups, enchiladas, chicken salad sandwiches, etc.

Part Five: Put all bones and leftover pieces back into the pot and simmer for another 6-20 hours. At this point I strain the broth into another pot, let it cool and put it into the fridge overnight until cold. The fat raises to the top and will easily be spooned off the top. The rest of the stock should look like jello. If you used a single chicken, you should have one gallon's worth of broth. So, depending on how long you cooked down the broth, you may have a half a gallon, or a quarter of a gallon of boiled down broth. Divide the broth into baggies of your preferred quantity. I usually boil mine down to half the original water quantity. So, 2 cups of boiled down broth makes 4 cups of prepared broth. I put 2 cups in each baggie so that I can easily have a quart for my soups. I freeze the individual baggies and thaw in warm water.