This homemade chicken broth recipe couldn’t be simpler. It’s incredibly healthy, easy to make, frugal and full of home-grown goodness! What could be better?!
It is the best beginner homesteader recipe.
Plus, canning it is very quick and easy!
How to Make Homemade Chicken Broth
Chicken broth makes a great addition to other recipes. It can make the perfect base for so many great recipes just like chicken noodle soup or any other quick soups you might think of!
Sure, you can get one from the nearest grocery store, but making your own homemade chicken broth is faster, easier, and gets you more involved!
You can either buy a whole chicken and bone it yourself, use leftover bones from a cooked chicken, or you could just get bones from the market.
I personally prefer boning a chicken, because that way, you get to enjoy chicken soup and use the rest of the chicken meat.
You can even use the shredded chicken for a bowl of chicken salad or creamy chicken soup topped with a piece of bay leaf.
This way you can make use of all chicken parts! Here are a few ways how you can prepare delicious homemade broth at home.
If you want to make a chicken bone broth, the first obvious step is to bone it, except if you bought chicken bones from the store, or you already have leftover chicken bones waiting.
Boning a whole raw chicken can be hard if it’s your first time, especially around the chicken breasts, but the more you do it, you just get used to it, and it’s no big deal since it’s not that hard to do!
And, the best part is, any chicken broth recipe calls for only the simple vegetables—one you can see just around the corner!
Because we eat grass-fed heritage chickens, their meat can be a little tough unless we cook it in a slow cooker.
About once a week I’ll cook a whole chicken in the slow cooker, pick the meat off, leave the bones in, and add vegetable scraps and herbs and fill it up with water.
I keep a large ziploc bag in my freezer whose sole purpose is to keep cooking throw-aways for use in my broth recipe.
End bits of carrots, celery, onions, un-used garlic cloves, mushroom tips, just about everything.
Put it all in the crockpot, cover with water, and let it cook on low for 24-48 hours.
This pulls all the nutrients and goodies out from the leftover foods, so you are sure you’re getting every last bit of goodness before throwing it away.
Once I strain out the bones and solid bits, I’ll put the crockpot in the fridge for an hour or two.
This helps chill the fat, which makes a white sheet on top of the broth. I usually remove this with a spoon, but that’s completely optional!
An easy way to make a richer stock is to add herbs and spices. Others love to roast the chicken, too, before tossing it into the stockpot.
When making your own broth, a good idea is to make them in a big batch. You can easily use a large stockpot for this.
This is why keeping large stock pots at home might come in handy. Having a handy standby of broth can be a big deal.
With good broth kept in the fridge, you can readily enjoy a bowl of hot broth anytime you want and need it.
Although, it’s always a good reminder to avoid keeping freshly cooked broth at room temperature. It can’t last until the next day without being kept in the fridge.
These are just some of my favorite recipes for homemade chicken broth. Find more recipes here, they even have recipes for turkey stock, too!
How to Can Chicken Broth
Once that’s done, I’ll boil my canning jars and lids in a large pot of water to sterilize them, and bring my chicken broth to a boil in another pot.
After the jars have been simmering for a bit, I remove them carefully (I’m clumsy and routinely stick my fingers in the boiling water) and set them on a kitchen towel, making sure not to touch anything to the insides of the jars or the lids.
I’ll then pour my broth into the canning jars, wipe the rims, and fasten the lids and rings. Pressure can these following the directions on your pressure canner:
- pints – process for 20 minutes,
- quarts – process for 25 minutes
After that, I’ll remove them and leave them on the counter until I hear that beautiful *ping!* sound.
If you’re more of a visual learner, or are still unsure about pressure canning, check out my friend Melissa’s awesome course on Canning with Confidence!
Feel free to experiment! Use pig bones or cow bones too. Talk to your local butcher about buying just the bones. You can also make this recipe with the bones alone, if you haven’t stockpiled veggie throw-away’s.
Or use only vegetable scraps if you don’t have any good bones!
For more canning recipes check out my posts below:
Dave
Wednesday 21st of October 2015
Lauren, saving scraps for stock is an old restaurant tip. When I cooked at a 4 star/4 diamond spa we used to save all veg scraps and at twice a week we made huge pots of veg stock, chicken stock, and beef stock for demi-glace.
I still do this with all veg scraps and every couple of weeks make a batch of stock for freezing. My beef stock recipe is adapted from the stock we made at the Culinary Institute of America when I was a student there. http://bit.ly/1hfN85H
Keep cooking and keep the dream of your own homestead!
Lauren Dibble
Wednesday 21st of October 2015
Dave, that's great! I had no idea restaurants did it, but it makes sense! I'm going to try the recipe you linked this week. Thank you for the comment!