Cooking with Annie: Episode 12 – Chicken Broth

Homemade chicken broth is one of those magical flavor boosters that just isn’t replicable with base, paste, or even store bought broth.  While those all work well out of necessity, once a taste of homemade chicken broth has hit your soup, it’s hard to go back.  Or at least hard not to notice the difference.  In this episode, we show you how to make broth from bones that were part of a chicken dinner and in a future episode, we’ll talk about what to do with any leftover meat to make a third meal.

If you missed the two soup episodes using up leftovers, they are here:  Carrot, Coconut, Ginger Soup and Creamy Potato Soup.

We’ve already talked about how to roast a whole chicken, and the next step is to take those leftover bones and all of the innards from the chicken – heart, liver, and gizzard – and add them to a stew pot.  Add a carrot, an onion with the peel, and a stalk of celery and cover everything with several inches of water.  Bring the pot to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and simmer for at least 45 minutes to an hour.  This sort of broth doesn’t take as long as full on chicken stock made with a whole, uncooked chicken.  The bones have already released some of their flavor and if you cook the broth too long, it begins to loose some of it’s wonderful flavor.  Lastly, strain the entire pot in a colander set over another pot and let drain.  Discard all of the bones and vegetables and store the broth in the refrigerator for up to a week or in the freezer (labeled and dated please!) for upto 6 months.

Annie
Happy cooking!