The Simplest Way to Make Chicken Broth


Growing up, most of us knew about chicken broth. By now, almost everyone has heard of bone broth as popularized by those into naturally healthy foods. Bone broth is a very gelatinous healthy chicken stock that can seem complicated and require long hours of cook time.

A beautiful, rich, bone broth is a lovely thing, but it can be intimidating and many home cooks do still want to make homemade broth. There is another way though, and I would like to share with you the easy and simple way that I make chicken broth, as taught to me by an excellent cook... my mother-in-law <3

This method of making broth can be altered to make beef broth (roast the bones first) or vegetable broth (omit the chicken and double up on the veg). One trick that I have learned is that if you keep a "stock box" or ziplock bag in your plastic freezer, you can toss in things like celery greens and onion ends that you'd like to save to use in your broth.



Usually I start by roasting a chicken. If you don't want to roast a chicken, you could buy chicken feet from the market, but we enjoy roast chicken anyway and so that is what we do. You can roast a chicken however you like, but here is what I do:

Unwrap the chicken, remove the bag of giblets (save this). Put it in a roasting pan, or any oven safe dish and sprinkle salt all over the skin. Turn the oven to 425F and put the chicken in until it is a beautiful golden brown color and at least 165F inside. Mine are often closer to 180/190 and they don't taste dry.

If you have a frozen chicken, you can still cook it whole from frozen. Make sure that the giblets bag is not wrapped in plastic, and then do the same as above and cook at 375F. If your giblets bag is plastic, you will have to wait until your chicken is thawed enough to remove the bag before cooking.

If you need a tutorial on carving your chicken, you can find a video I made of the easy way I carve chicken here.


Making the broth:

Yield: approx. 1 qt broth

Take your chicken carcass, any saved giblets you might have, and any soup vegetables you have in your fridge. I like to use half an onion, celery, and carrots. Rinse your vegetables but don't worry about chopping or removing onion skin because they will be strained out at the end and not remain in your soup.

Pick any excess meat that you'd like to save for your soup off the carcass and put it aside.

Put the chicken and vegetables into a pot, and cover the bones with water until they are just covered. Bring them to a boil and then turn down to a slow boil for 1-3 hours or so. Salt to taste as cooking.

Note: I like to make my roast chicken for dinner, carve it and put the broth on before we eat, and then turn it off and have finished broth before bedtime.

Once you've made your broth, pour it through a strainer into another pot or container. You can store this in your fridge for a week, or freeze it.

It really is very simple and I encourage you to try this even if you are intimidated about the broth making process. If you have any questions, feel free to send me an e-mail and I'd be glad to answer them.

Happy cooking!