Chicken broth

My love of free things is surpassed only by my love of making huge amounts of money. The latter doesn't happen very often, so I must content myself with the former. Homemade chicken broth is one of those things that's not only economical, but much better than the bought version. I make mine in a slow cooker, but you can easily make it in a large pot over low heat, as long as you keep an eye on it to make sure it isn't drying up.

You can add pretty much anything you like to this recipe. My thrifty refusal to throw out vegetable scraps* leads me to keep a large bowl full of them in my freezer, alongside chicken carcasses and those giblet things you pull out of the cavity of a chicken before you roast it.** After we've eaten roast chicken or some other chicken dish involving bones, I take the bones off people's plates and put them in the bowl too--boiling them will kill the germs. I usually wait until I have three Ghosts of Chickens Past piled up in the bowl before I pull out the large of my two slow cookers and dump everything in. The mixture usually includes onion skins, celery leaves and ends, carrot peelings, mushroom stems, and bunches of parsley and other fresh herbs that were about to go bad and needed using up.

There is no strict recipe or ingredient list to this. Simply get your chicken carcass(es) and your vegetable scraps (no matter if your broth doesn't have vegetables, by the way--the carcass on its own will make a perfectly good broth) and place them in the slow cooker. Cover them with boiling water, and cook all day (or all night) on low until you have a lovely rich broth. Let it cool inside the slow cooker, then strain the broth into a large bowl. Discard the bones and vegetable scraps.

Cover the bowl and put it in the refrigerator to chill. After a while, all the fat should rise to the top. Skim it off and discard it. Then again, some people love fatty broth for its richer taste, so by all means leave it in if you prefer.

The broth will keep for 4-5 days in the refrigerator, but if you like, you can decant it into little containers and freeze it. Some people use ice trays so that they can easily throw a cube or two of broth into a recipe.


*I would love to have a compost heap, but Mr. B has begged me not to on account of the wildlife problem in these parts. He detests raccoons and all their furry friends. I tried to negotiate a worm bin or a Bokashi, but he wouldn't budge.

**You can get giblets and things like chicken hearts and so on for mere pennies in some supermarkets, and you could add these to your stock pot. I stand by my motto that "offal is awful," but it makes good broth.