Bone broth. If you’re like me, you’ve been hearing a lot about this recently. It seems to have gained more attention through the popular Paleo Diet. I don’t follow this diet, but I’ve been making my own chicken stock for awhile and wanted to know what the difference was.
Once I started reading up on it, I learned that cooking the bones for 12-24 hours and adding a bit of cider vinegar helps extract more minerals and nutrients from the bones. It also makes the broth tastier. Over several attempts, I’ve managed to create a very basic but very delicious recipe for this magical bone broth.
This bone broth is not like the quarts of chicken stock at the grocery store. Far, far from it. This is REAL chicken soup – like our parents or grandparents used to make. It’s THIS chicken soup that will make you feel better when you are sick. And there are host of other wonderful health benefits, which you can read about here.
This broth will also make your favorite soup taste AMAZING. I have so many yummy soups and whenever I had homemade bone broth instead of store-brought watered down broth it takes my soups to a whole new level of delicious.
Did I mention this is easy to make? Oh yeah. It is. You can use a whole, uncooked chicken or you can use the carcass of a cooked bird.
First you start with the vegetable base of the broth to give it lots of flavors: carrots, celery, onion and garlic.
Chop them up into chunks.
Add them to a large crockpot and add about 1/4 cup of cider vinegar
I added the bones of the cooked bird at this point, but you could put an uncooked bird in at this point. If you do that, you would follow the other steps, but just remove the bird once it’s cooked (4-6 hours), take the meat off for another use (put in a salad, add to the soup at the end, etc.), and put the bones back in the crockpot to cook for the remainder of the time.
Fill to the top with water. This is a 5 quart crockpot.
Cook on low for 12-24 hours. It will make your entire house smell amazing. About 1-2 hours before finishing, add fresh herbs like sage, rosemary, parsley, thyme, or oregano. We have rosemary year-round in our garden so I use that in the winter, but in the summer I like to use a combination of whatever we have growing.
Once cooked, remove from heat and strain. You can keep the veggies if you are going to make a regular chicken soup and add the chicken back in if you started with the whole bird. I discarded mine here and the bones should be discarded at this point.
Beautiful bone broth, ready to make some amazing soups, risottos and sauces!
In this crockpot, I get about 10-12 cups – almost 3 quarts. It makes buying and cooking whole, organic chickens quite economical. I also don’t need to use all this broth in a soup recipe – I usually use half as much and then use water. It still has more flavor than store-bought broth!
I freeze until ready to use. When I’m sick or feeling under the weather, I’ll keep some in the refrigerator and warm up 4-6 ounces to drink. Amazing stuff!
- 1 whole chicken (4-5 lb bird), uncooked OR bones/carcass from a cooked bird
- 2-3 celery stalks, roughly chopped
- 2-3 carrots, roughly chopped
- 1 onion, roughly chopped
- 2-3 cloves of garlic, smashed
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- water
- Handful of fresh herbs like parsley, rosemary, thyme, oregano, etc.
- In a 5-quart crockpot, place chopped vegetables and garlic
- Add apple cider vinegar
- Add chicken or chicken carcass/bones
- Fill crockpot to the top with water
- Cover and cook on low for 12-24 hours (If cooking a whole chicken, remove after 4-6 hours and take meat off the bones. Add bones back to crockpot and continue cooking for the remaining time)
- 1-2 hours before finishing, add a handful of fresh herbs
- Strain broth and discard bones
- Store in the freezer.