Chicken Bone Broth - comes in handy for so many things....

I have on my stove a pot of chicken bone broth cooking. I love this stuff. It makes a wonderful broth to sip on all by itself, and makes wonderful soups. (no picture this time - have not had my camera out in ages and it needed the battery charged.)

To make chicken bone broth:
1 chicken baked according to how you like it, eat what you want off of it but save the bones, skin, and leave the little pieces of meat you cannot get off. You can also save chicken leg and thigh bones if you make just dark meat like we will do often - my son loves the drumsticks, I enjoy the thighs - and just pull the meat off and toss the bones back into a bag for this broth. Another option - you've baked a chicken but it has quite a bit of meat left on it - just toss it in for about 30 minutes - take it back out, remove meat for salads or sammys and put the bones back in. There is no "wrong" way to prepare this stock.

1 onion
3 carrots
3 stalks of celery
garlic powder
basil
oregano
salt

water

In a large stock pot toss in the leftover chicken pieces, add rough chopped onion, celery, carrots and herbs. Pour in enough water to fill the pot to desired amount. I fill mine pretty full because it will reduce. For the herbs I don't measure - but for a decent stock pot about a teaspoon of each works well, except for the salt which I use about 1/2 teaspoon. Smell the herbs - taste them dry - and decide how much of that smell and flavor you want in your finished product. Carrots are naturally sweet when they are cooked in water - and lend that to the stock - if you don't like sweet too much use less. But I don't recommend more because then it takes on a strong carrot flavor.

This stock is designed to be cooked low and slow - barely a simmer for about 2 hours. I have simmered it longer - however, I read recently that it can cause some histamine reactions - of which I am not sure of. The longer it simmers the darker the color it gets.

I don't mind the fat -- but you can skim it off the top of the stock.