Easy Chicken Bone Broth or Stock Master Recipe

Here you will find a simple chicken bone broth recipe to which you may add any additional vegetables you wish. From this recipe are two awesome sub recipes so that you don’t throw away all your beautiful ingredients. Soup vegetable latkes and brown butter roasted cabbage. No waste!

First here are some offerings on making a broth. I often butcher 2 whole chickens, saving all the bones for a broth. This way, you can make one dish with the breasts, another with the legs and broth with parts.

I also always have wings, feet, soup hens, and sometimes a rooster frozen for which I use to make this broth. I always freeze backs, necks and giblets(for frying with onions). See your local farmer’s market and ask if they have chicken parts.

Feel free to also save your chicken carcasses from roast chickens to then make a bone broth. I often do not pre-roast the used or fresh bones as many people do to create more flavor and color. I find the vegetables, onion peel, turmeric and long cooking provide that rich brothy color without an extra 2 hours of preheating oven, roasting time and sheet pan cleaning.-If you wish to do this, I did add a note in the cook’s notes for roasting.

If you want more collagen, use feet and wings. Breast bones are not particularly flavorful so make sure you use them with a combo of other bones.

Use your common sense. There is not an exact science to or specific recipe. It’s just adding a good amount of chicken parts, a handful of vegetables and herbs if you have some on hand and covering the whole thing with 2 inches of cold water. You can use a tall stock pot or you can use an instapot and place on the broth setting. While I think the instapot works wonderfully and serves a purpose for busy folks, I find the bubbles and percolating of the water in a tall stock pot, helps to properly cook the broth, allow to reduce slightly, improves flavor and extracts collagen from the bones which are so vital for our health. Put it up over a lazy sunday or feel free to use the instapot overnight.

Don’t fuss over a recipe. It’s all good. If you have a few mushrooms, add them, If you have a zucchini put the entire thing in. I find scrubbing but not peeling, and placing the vegetables in whole, allows you to pull them out of the pot easier while still extracting all the key flavors and nutrients.

If interested in making the sub recipes, make sure you use whole cabbage halves lengthwise with the core intact, and at 2-3 large potatoes or 5-6 small ones with a carrot and parsnip.

Lastly, make sure you chill down your broth properly to prevent food born illness.

Remove all the solids with a long pair of tongs or long spotted spoon. If you wish to save all the great broth, place a large colander over a bowl and transfer the solids to the colander so the broth drips into the bowl.

Next, place a stopper and very clean sink. You want to make sure the water is not draining. Careful move the whole stock pot into the sink, lid off. Empty a whole bag or two of ice into the sink around the pot. Place the faucet away from the pot, and carefully add cold water so the ice water fills at least halfway up the pot. Carefully cover the ice with a lot of kosher salt to bring down the temperature of the water.

Stir the contents of the pot, frequently with a metal spoon to make sure the broth is chilling down evenly and quickly. If you choose, you may even add some fresh ice to the broth(it will dilute the flavor) but will chill down the mixture faster.

Once cool, carefully remove and dry the outside of the pot well. Do not skip this part because as you are portioning your broth you don’t want to forget and start pouring broth into a container and have any salty drippings or contaminated drippings get into your broth from the outside of the pot.

Portion the broth into quart or pint containers and you can now refrigerate or freeze for later use. I recommend freezing whatever you won’t drink within 5-6 days and then defrost slowly in the fridge as needed.

(Check us out soon for more on how to butcher a chicken and how to carve a chicken!)