How to make Cheap and Easy Chicken Bone Broth from Kitchen Scraps

The roasted chicken from yesterday became a lovely bone broth for soup bases and stews. Homemade bone broth is rich in collagen, calcium, and other nutrients garnered from the bones, marrow, skin, and connective tissues of the chicken carcass. Consuming these tissues and nutrients helps you retain healthy joints, skin, and hair! Making bone broth not only saves you money, but it is less wasteful than buying canned broths and far more nutritious. I know some people are turned off by cooking whole birds and dealing with the remains, but that is a big problem in this country. Far too many people are so far removed from their food, they have no respect for what it was and where it came from. Making your meals TRULY from scratch every now and then can bring you closer to the source and give you an appreciation of the energy that goes into raising, growing, and processing resources into a delicious table spread.

Making a bone broth from a chicken carcass is so easy, anyone can do it with no inconvenience.

• Plop your carcass into a large crock pot.
• Add whatever skin or loose bone and cartilage to the crock pot as well.
• Add a clove of garlic, and some veggie scraps. The ends of your celery and the skins from your onions are perfect for this!
• Fill with water until everything is covered with an inch of liquid to spare.
• Turn crock pot on low and leave it for 24 to 48 hours.

It will take several hours for your liquid to reach a simmering point. Once it does, you want to keep it on a light simmer for 24 hours or more based on how much tissue you want to break down. Depending on your chicken’s diet and lifestyle before slaughter, it might take more or less time for tough connective tissue.

When your broth is ready, it will have a consistency of melted gelatin. (Because it is full of gelatin!) At this point you can start straining your bones, skin, and scraps out with a slotted spoon.

If you have a mesh strainer, that would be the most efficient way to remove small bones and debris from your broth. Pour your liquid gold into your chosen containers and let it cool to room temperature. A good broth will form a nice sized fat cap on the top. DO NOT remove the fat cap. This cap seals the broth and allows you to keep it in your fridge for several weeks or even months. You can also freeze your bone broth, although I find freezing and thawing to alter the texture and denature the gelatine.

I store my bone broth in mason jars in the back of my fridge. Two 16 ounce jars or one 32 ounce jar is the perfect amount for a big pot of stew.

A real homemade bone broth is much richer than canned stuff at the grocery store and adds a textural dimension to your soups and stews you cannot achieve otherwise. It truly is a way to not only reduce food waste and money spent, but also vastly improve your hearty winter meals. The more nutrient dense your food, the more nourished your body, which leads to better health, reduced cravings, and increased vitality. What’s not to love about that?

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