Homemade Chicken Broth

I kid you not.  You don’t need a recipe for this.  If you have some cooked leftover chicken, add the bones and skin to the pot, if it doesn’t have any super-intense spices on it.  If you’re buying uncooked chicken, don’t bother with buying a whole one.  The white meat will be wasted and doesn’t add much, except dry meat.   Instead buy wings, backs, necks.  I don’t do feet, but maybe you do.  Buy as much as you can get into your really BIG (not little) pot, maybe 4-5 pounds?  You want lots of bones and skin.

The next step may be controversial.  I’ve adopted the Chinese way of putting the chicken in the pot (nothing else at this point), filling the pot with cold water, barely covering the chicken, bringing it all to a boil, letting it boil for about 2 minutes (it will get really nasty and foamy looking) and then dumping that all into a colander in the sink, rinsing everything, including the chicken and the pan, off, putting the cleansed chicken back into the cleansed pot, re-filling the pot with cold water until it barely covers the chicken, bringing the water back to a simmer, and  then starting the real broth-cooking, adding the vegetables, etc. at that time.  The only catch to this is that it’s very tricky and scary when you pour out the water, because the pan is heavy and hot.  The advantage to this approach is that the time-consuming, slightly-annoying task of skimming off the scum for about 10 minutes has pretty much been alleviated.

If you don’t want to risk scalding yourself (or your dog who is beneath your feet, watching you), do this instead:  barely cover the chicken with water, bring it all to a hardy boil, turn the heat down to a simmer, stir, and skim off the scum which comes to the surface until it quits coming.  My mother would even take a paper towel and go around the edge of the pot to remove scum, so, of course, I do that too, if I’m using the scum-removing approach.

In either case, once your broth has had the scum removed, add lots of what you’ve got on hand.  Parsley?  check.  Carrots?  check.  Celery? check.  Onion? check.  Same with garlic.  Thyme?  Oregano? perfect – about 1 tsp each.  A leek? fabulous.  Salt, of course.  Start with about 1 T of kosher salt.  Pepper – about 1 tsp.  Tony Chachere’s Seasoning? YES! to taste.  Bay leaves?  1 or 2. Or you could go the Asian route and add ginger, scallions, lemongrass, maybe some cilantro,  a few slices of a jalapeno pepper, fish sauce, and/or star anise.

Simmer everything – with no lid or with a lid just partially on – for as long as you are willing, hopefully about 3 hours or more.  Do NOT let it boil hard.  I did that recently and ended with very cloudy stock.  Add hot water, if necessary, to keep the chicken covered.

Then cool, strain, and freeze.  FYI – my 4# of chicken backs yielded about 10 cups of broth.