Making & Canning Chicken Broth

Making your own chicken broth is incredibly easy and certainly tastes better than the store bought kind.  You have control over what goes into the broth.

I started with the broth left over from canning the chicken (please see previous post) but you can save the bones from your chickens and turkeys and use those.  Whenever you bake chicken just save the bones and stuff them in the freezer in a bag, when you have a lot then make broth.  All you need to do is boil them in water.  You can break the larger bones so the marrow comes out.  You can also add vegetables and herbs and spices of your choice.

Since I was using the broth from boiling all that chicken I had a head start.  I had also added onion, carrot and garlic to the pot.  At this point to make broth I added back into the pot the skins and bones, added a bit more onion chopped fine and some salt & pepper along with a bit more garlic.  I also had to add water.  I let it boil for probably 2-3 hours so that it reduced to make a nice strong stock.  

After I felt it was 'done' the bones and skins were removed with a big strainer spoon like you would use when deep frying.  Then I poured the broth through a colander so the broth went into the regular bowl below it, further straining out any bits of bone and skin.  

I don't mind if my broth is not perfectly clear or perfectly grease free, though there was hardly any grease in this batch, the chickens were not fatty at all.  I got 5 quarts of beautiful stock to make soups & stews or for cooking rice and noodles.

Linking to:
Barn Hop #75