Make Your Own Chicken Stock

Today we had plans to go out to dinner and run a few errands after work, so I didn't need to actually cook dinner. But I did want to use my crock pot today to pre-cook some chicken that I'll need for future recipes I want to try, and the bonus is that this means I made my own chicken stock! There are a lot of variations out there for how to do this, but I used the 5 Dollar Dinners version (another great blog that I follow) as my inspiration. And let me just say, I ended up craving chicken all day because it smelled so good! Here's how it went down...

 

Ingredients were super basic. I used chicken breasts so it would be all white meat, with some season salt, garlic salt, and black pepper. I washed the chicken and patted it dry and generously sprinkled with the seasoning. I left the skin on for cooking (but removed it later so it would be healthier) so I knew much of the seasoning would be removed. Warning - I think I overdid it a bit. So next time, I'd ease up on the seasoning.

I put about a cup of water in the crock pot (I'm using the 6qt pot here, but I think it would have easily fit in the 4qt pot) and set the chicken inside. Oh yeah, I also threw in 2 cloves of garlic - just peeled and smashed them a little, but left them whole. Then turned it on low and let it go. I did open the lid once (I still have a hard time leaving it alone) in order to shift the chicken around so that the three pieces were spread around more. But other than that, I just smelled it all day (seriously wish blogs had smell-a-vision!). SOOOO comforting smelling!

After 8 hours I pulled it out - and the meat was falling off the bone! So much so that it was hard to get out of the pot. As soon as I stuck the fork in, it just crumbled into bits.

But I managed to get it all on the plate and cooled before I removed the skin and bones. I put them in .5 lb portions in ziploc bags (I ended up with a total of 1.25 lbs from this package) and poured the water/broth from the pot into a small plastic container. I'd guess I got 1.5 cups of good broth out of this.

Next time, I think I'd follow the advice of the 5 Dollar Dinner recipe and use a whole chicken. Again, my pieces were smaller so I think they cooked a lot faster. Why hasn't this lesson sunk in yet so that I can adjust properly for it? I guess that's why I'm still a Crock Pot Virgin.

So...I stuck my chicken and broth in the freezer and now it's all ready for a new recipe or two next week. Hmmm...which one to choose? :-)