Healthy Homemade Chicken Stock

Great base stock that's used in a ton of recipes and is also delicious to sip on its own.

Ingredients:

3 Onions

4 Carrots

4 Stalks of Celerey

3 Spriggs of Fresh Rosemary (or 1 tbsp dried)

3 Spriggs/bunches of Thyme (or 1/2 tbsp dried)

1 tbsp Salt

1 tbsp black pepper corns (whole)

Water (to fill your vessel)

2lbs (or so) of chicken, either a whole chicken, thighs, legs, whatever is on sale

Method:

Step 1:

Get a good big thick bottom pot and toss in the chicken. Fill the pot to about 1" below the lid with cold water. Put the pot on the stovetop and bring it up to boil. - The quantities above work well for a dutch oven like you see in the picture above. If you are using a HUGE pot (or a small one) and want to scale up or down - try to visually have 1 part chicken to 3-3.5 parts water. That should get you where you want to go.

Step 2:

As the pot comes to a boil, you will see impurities come to the surface (in the form of bubbles and foam). Use a slotted spoon or fine mesh tea-spoon thingy to "skim" the impurities from the top. Aside from getting rid of the un-pleasant chicken foam, this will lead to a nice clean and clear stock at the end.

Step 3:

While you wait for the chicken to come up to a boil, clean the celery and carrots and chop them up into manageable sized chunks. Also cut up the onion (you can leave the skins on, you will strain it all at the end anyway).

Step 4:

Once the water is boiling and you have skimmed most of the foam, toss in all the veggies and give the pot time to re-temp and come back up to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer, toss in the rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper and then let simmer for 2 hours.

Step 5:

After 2 hours of simmering your stock will be ready (and your home should smell amazing). Remove all the big chunks of chicken and veggies and run the stock through a fine mesh sieve (fancy fine mesh strainer thing). If you don't have a sieve, take a normal collanger, line it with cheesecloth (found in any grocery store) and run it through a collander/cheesecloth contraption into a fresh bowl or pot.

Step 6:

Salt to taste at the end. Pro Tip: Pour into a coffee cup with a tiny fresh squeez of lemon juice and hand to someone you love while to parse out the stock into vessels for freezing/keeping in the fridge for future use.

Enjoy!