How to Make Chicken Bone Broth

Making chicken bone broth in the crock pot is incredibly easy. Bone broth of any kind offers great health benefits and is absolutely delicious. As if that was not enough, chicken bone broth utilizes only ingredients you would otherwise throw away making it a great way to stretch your grocery budget. I highly recommend following this incredibly easy process to create delicious and nourishing bone broth.

What is bone broth

Broth is really a term that refers to the liquid of simmering anything, including fish and vegetables. Stock is a more specific kind of broth made from slow simmering of bones in order to extract the gelatin and minerals within those bones. The bones should be the highest quality you can obtain. I buy local, pasture raised, whole chickens. This is the process I use when I have already cooked a whole chicken, but you can very easily adapt these simple steps to whatever you are already making, or have access to.

Roast A Chicken Whole

Roasted chicken is an incredibly easy meal. You can use pretty much any whole chicken or bone in chicken recipe. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Lemon and Garlic Chicken

Simple Roasted Chicken in a Cast Iron

Garlic Herb Chicken

Slow Cooker Chicken

How to Make Chicken Bone Broth

Roasted Chicken Bones – The bones you use will vary depending on how you have cooked the chicken. Some remaining meat on the bone is great.

2 Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar – The acid helps break down the bones allowing more minerals and beneficial components of the bones to breakdown into your broth.

Carrot, Onion, and Celery – I keep a ziplock bag in the freezer and periodically thrown in wilted celery, celery tops, wilted carrots, carrot ends, and onion skins I would otherwise toss.

Add the above scraps to a slow cooker and fill with water. Set the crock pot on high and ignore it for at least eight hours. You will know it is working by the delicious, wholesome aroma that fills your kitchen. Cook the stock until the bones begin to soften. A little more or a little less depending on your schedule and everything else you have to get done that day is fine. This is not an exact science, just give it a whirl, and make it work for your life.

Strain out the solid bits. Store in freezer safe containers. I like to freeze mine in cubes (like this) so I can pop out one or two as I need them. I also use freezer safe glass pyrex containers and freezer safe mason jars.

How to Use Your Bone Broth

#1- In your cooking. Use in place of store bought stock in any recipe.

#2- As the base of any soup.

#3- In place of water for rice or quinoa.

#4- Drink warm. There are tremendous health benefits to consuming broth.

#5- Make chicken soup. Sometimes I immediately make chicken soup. Depending on my meal plan and what I have on hand I make chicken noodle, chicken vegetable, or chicken rice soup. Rather than freezing the bone broth it goes right into the soup pan.