Making Chicken Broth From Scratch

A few days ago I made chicken broth from scratch. Chicken broth is a useful addition to many recipes, and I hate being without it, which I have been for quite awhile. It’s very expensive to buy, the regular Swanson broth was a little over $2 for what I think was a 16 oz box at the store. In my broth I used the following ingredients for a total cost of $12.63.

A little over 10 pounds of chicken, plus the carcasses of two previously cooked chickens. I used breasts and thighs, bought on sale, for a total of $9.36.

1 pound of celery, $1.18

1 pound of carrots, $.84

2 tablespoons sage $.25

Salt, pepper, garlic, thyme, rosemary, nutmeg, parsley $.50

2 whole onions, $.50

Here’s the step by step breakdown.

Take out your chicken to thaw a day or two before your cooking day. For this, you can use any pieces of chicken that weren’t on a plate. For example, if I roast a whole chicken, I will put the carcass in a baggie and freeze it. If I used cut up chicken pieces, I will take the back and wings and throw them in a baggie and freeze it. If I cooked chicken that wasn’t put on a plate, I will pick the meat off and then throw the bones in the carcass baggie. If it ended up on a plate, it could have gotten saliva on it, so I don’t use anything that was on a plate. Even though the chicken has been cooked, the bones still retain their marrow, so can still be used.

To this I will add either a couple of chickens, or parts I need to use up. If I’m using parts, I try to include breasts so that I have a good mixture of white and dark meat when I pick the meat.

The morning that you’re going to do your cooking, chop your carrots, celery and onions. You don’t have to make them pretty or edible sized. You will have cooked all of the flavor out of them so you’ll be discarding them when you’re done with the broth. For the ingredients I’ve listed above, I use two stockpots-if you’re only using one you want to half everything.

Take out your stockpots, and add a few inches of water. Add your chicken parts. I divide them evenly between pots. Today each pot held a carcass, 8 thighs and 3 breasts. Cover with water and turn on high heat. Let the chickens come to a boil, and scrape off that “scum” that forms in the first bit of cooking. Once you’ve passed the scum stage, add your herbs, spices and veggies. Bring back to a boil, then turn the heat down to low and just let it simmer. If you’re using whole chickens, you will want to let it go for at least four hours. Pieces don’t take as long. As long as you keep adding water, you won’t burn anything even if you let it go for longer.

Once it’s done, I cover it and put it in the back fridge for an hour. This cools it enough that I can handle the meat and do the strain on the broth. While it’s cooling, pull out your large bowls and colanders, have a bowl for each colander that you’ll be using, and then three more bowls, one for draining, one for the chicken meat and one for the stuff you’ll be discarding.

When I start doing the strain, I don’t start pouring. I pick the meat out with my hands if it’s cool enough, or strong utensils. That goes straight into a colander which is in a bowl. I continue pulling stuff out this way until I can’t anymore. I will have hopefully gotten all of the big chunks out by then. Then I begin slowly pouring the broth through the colanders. When a bowl is full, I pull the colander out and put it into the drain bowl (using it as another broth bowl if needed). I keep doing this until the stock pot is empty. Then I pour the broth back into the stock pot. I squeeze the stuff in the colander to squeeze out any remaining broth, put it on a plate to catch any remaining drippings, and if need be put that back in the fridge for awhile to cool.

The stock pot full of broth is again covered and put into the fridge, until tomorrow. Then I begin sorting through the colanders. I pick the meat off and put it in one bowl, then put the discards (veggies, bones, skins, etc) in another bowl. Once all the meat is picked, I bag it up in approximately two cup increments and freeze it. Now I have chicken meat ready for casseroles. Today I ended up with enough meat for 6 meals.

The next day, I pull the stockpot of broth out of the fridge. All of the fat has hardened at the top, making it easy to scrape off. Once I’ve completed this step, I put it back on the stove, bring it to a full rolling boil, and then put it into quart jars, leaving one inch of headspace. I cover with Saran Wrap and a canning ring, then freeze. This batch of broth yielded 8 quarts.

So for $12.63, I have 8 quarts (I think, I used some and forgot to count) of broth, which will work in several meals, plus pre-cooked meat for 6 meals. Just counting the meat, that’s a cost of $2.10 per meal, or $.30 per person that I feed. That means the broth is free. If I do the broth at even $1.00 per quart, that takes the cost of meat down to below $1.00 per meal.

The ingredients for my broth are listed above. Below is a list of ingredients in Swanson’s Natural Goodness, 33% less sodium chicken broth, found in a friend’s pantry:

Chicken Stock

Salt

Flavoring (What kind of flavoring? Natural or artificial? MSG? What are the ingredients of the flavoring?)

Dextrose (Why does one need sugar in chicken broth?)

Autolyzed Yeast Extract (Huh?)

Celery Juice Concentrate

Carrot Juice Concentrate

Onion Juice Concentrate

It's more than just the money savings-it's avoiding the extra sugar (empty calories) and the autolyzed whatever that is put into your food. It's not organic, but it's certainly an improvement!

Many beautiful blessings,
MTW