Homemade Chicken Broth
One of the easiest things to make is homemade chicken broth. In fact, I keep several containers of it in my freezer at all times. It's perfect as a base for any soup, I even use it in my chicken pot pie recipe. By making it yourself you can control everything that goes into it. I barely salt mine to allow me to adjust the flavoring as needed for the final product. Many store bought stocks and broths are too salty for my taste. You can even freeze them into ice cubes and only use as little as you need, or into larger containers to allow for larger recipes. As with many of my recipes, they can be easily adjusted to allow for whatever happens to be in your spice cabinet.
Chicken Broth
Ingredients:
Water
Bone-in Chicken (I prefer buying a whole chicken already cut up, but any chicken will work. Bone-in gives the best flavor)
Any spices you have on hand
Directions:
1. Add chicken and spices to pot of water. Go easy on the salt because you can always adjust that in the finished product. My basic go to spices are salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, crushed red pepper flakes, thyme, and poultry seasoning.
2. Mix well, bring to a simmer, uncovered, and let cook on a low simmer until chicken is cooked through. I like to let it cook for about an hour to make sure the chicken is fully cooked and tender and the flavors have a chance to blend.
3. Turn off heat, uncover, carefully remove chicken into a separate bowl and allow to cool.
4. Once the chicken has cooled enough for you to handle you can begin picking the meat apart and discarding the skin, bones, and cartilage. The chicken meat can now be used in just about anything: ravioli, pasta, chicken pot pie, soup, salad, etc.
5. The broth can now be used immediately or stored for later. I don't drain my broth, but if you prefer it drained it won't hurt anything.
Now that you have homemade chicken broth, what are you going to make with it? I think this is one of the most important recipe tools to have in the kitchen, what is your favorite?