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FOOD

Homemade Chicken Stock

I made my first chicken stock from scratch last year from some recipe I found in a cookbook. I found that it was okay, but definitely lacking in flavor and I thought it used up a lot of good vegetables for such a bland stock.

Then this spring I came across Christina’s vegetable stock recipe, she shared that she keeps all the cut offs from various vegetables and stores them in a large freezer bag to use in her stocks. I thought this sounded amazing, how about making homemade chicken stock purely out of stuff that I would have just thrown away (or composted). This was right up my simple living alley.

So I started saving the ends and peels of carrots, leftover bits of garlic and onion and their skins, broccoli stems, pepper stems, insides and seeds, the ends of celery stalks as well as any herb trimmings. In just a few short weeks I filled up my freezer bag. I then made a whole chicken for supper one night (I always use my slow cooker for whole chicken, so easy) and after supper I placed the remaining bones and skins from the chicken into a 6 quart stock pot with as much of my frozen vegetable trimmings as I could fit, filled it with water and let it simmer.

A few hours later I had an amazing chicken stock that I made from what would normally be wasted food. I just love that!

I also like that I get to choose how much salt gets added into my stock (none!) and bone broth has a lot of health benefits including reducing joint pain, heals the gut and promotes healthy digestion, prevents infection, promotes healthy bones, gives healthy hair and nail growth and fights inflammation (who knew it did so much?)!

I mainly use the chicken stock for rice, whenever I make rice I just use the chicken stock in place of water. And of course I love it for soups, I guess with all the benefits of bone broth there really is something to the whole idea of having a bowl of chicken noodle soup when you are sick.

What recipes do you use chicken stock in?
Do you make your own stock?

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