Chicken and Broth: the How To
Chicken and Broth
You want the aroma of comfort food wafting through your house? Just cook up a chicken. You’ll have the tastiest chicken and broth you’ve ever had. You can use a whole chicken, leg quarters, thighs, or breasts. If you use bone-in with a layer of the natural fat, you’ll have richer chicken and broth – and one with a lot more flavor.
Four ways for cooking
If you have a pressure canner, an Instant Pot, or a pressure cooker, you can use any one of these. If you have neither, use a large kettle. You should cook the chicken until it literally falls off the bones. Let it cool, then separate fat and bones from the chicken. Use a sieve to strain the chicken and broth from other pieces.
More broth from bones
Put the bones and fat (if you prefer) into a pot, add water, and cook it some more. The liquid resulting from this second cooking is bone broth. If you’ve never done this, you’ll be amazed at the amount of broth you can get from cooking those bones and pieces of fat!
If you’re a fan of onions, you can add onions to the water. Include your favorite seasonings, including salt and pepper to give your chicken and broth the flavor you prefer.
Once your chicken and broth have cooled, put it into containers. You can use freezer containers or freezer bags. For the broth, I’ve stored it in containers or canned it. Recently I’ve started freezing the broth in muffin tins (you can use ice cube trays too).
When the broth is frozen, turn the muffin tin upside down. If the frozen pieces don’t pop out, run warm water over the bottom of the muffin tins to loosen it. Then put the pieces together into a freezer bag and store in the freezer.
The Recipe
Chicken and Broth: the How To
Ingredients
- Chicken - bone in preferred with fat pieces attached; whatever amount you want
- Water - enough to cover if doing it on stove top. Follow directions for pressure canner pressure cooker, and Instant pot
- Salt and Pepper - several Tablespoons as desired
- Onion - optional; cut up and diced
Instructions
- If using a kettle on top of the stove, place chicken into container and cover with water
- Add onion and seasonings as desired
- Cook until meat falls off the bones
- Drain, saving all liquid
- When cool to handle, remove meat from the bones
- Continue to cool the meat
- Return bones and fat (optional) to kettle with more water
- Cook until all bones are completely stripped of meat
- Strain again and let cool
- Once cool, place chicken and broth in separate containers
- Freeze or can the broth
- Freeze chicken in freezer bags
I love easy access to broth in my freezer. This recipe was posted several years ago. Recently someone asked me about it, so I decided to post it again for my new readers.
