You may enjoy the link below. These are the methods I use for making very rich broth.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Broth Is Beautiful

When I make broth I generally buy one of the 10lb bags of legs and thighs they sell at big stores for around 5 bucks. The dark meat has more flavor, especially if you roast it a before making your broth. Also, it's a lot less expensive than using a whole chicken with breast meat.

I normally do not save any of the left over meat or vegetables, unless I'm giving the cat a treat. The reason is that by the time the broth is done, all the flavor from the meat and vegetables is in the pot. Also, I generally don't add the vegetables until the flavor from the chicken has been extracted. Over cooked vegetables taste weird to me. If you waited until the end for the vegetables, you could remove the meat much easier to pick apart. Hope this helps.

I prefer to make chicken broth with the carcass of a roasted chicken (or turkey) augmented by chicken backs, necks etc that I can get at the butchers for next to nothing. I don't care for the meat left over if using a whole bird, it's way to cooked out for my taste. So for me it's easy. All the "stuff", veggies, herbs etc go right in the garbage , no picking through.

Beef broth is a bit of a religion with me. I use beef short ribs (watch for sales), bones from prime ribs and beef, veal bones. I roast all of them with veggies and then simmer that to make the broth. I find a good beef must start with roasted bones. If you just throw them in water with veggies you don't get that deep beef flavour.

I make beef broth and then cook it down even further to a brown sauce and, if I'm really in the mood, down even further to a demi glace.

If I don't have any in the freezer I'll sub a commercial chicken broth for homemade, but never beef, always homemade.

Another trick if you're just making a little bit of broth: use a pressure cooker. After having a roast chicken for a meal, put the carcass and all the trimmings in the PC, cover with a little water, add an onion and whatever else you want, and pressure cook it on high. In about 30 minutes you'll have some broth made from stuff you might have thrown away.

I usually make humongous recipes of broth, yielding 16 to 20 quarts at a time (I use two kettles, one 5 gallon and another 7.5 gallon). The exact ingredients vary a bit from batch to batch depending on what cuts the local meat market has; as kandm noted, those big bags of leg quarters are often a really good buy. But I'll augment those with some really tendon-y parts like turkey necks and chicken backs.

(My mother, god rest her soul, used to call making a chicken dish from such trimmings 'Chicken Napoleon' -- because it's made from the bony-parts.)

If the weather is nice and I'm up to the task, I'll take a bunch of leg quarters and smoke them in a charcoal smoker for a few hours, and make the stock with that. I'll even add the drippings from the water pan to the stock pot. After cooking, the broth has to be strained through a flour sack towel to remove all the bits of charcoal and ash, but the resultant broth is fantastic for certain dishes. (Very hearty and rich, and great for gumbos or cooking beans, but not for anything delicate like chicken noodle soup.)

You probably already know this, but don't add salt to the stock. You can always add it to the dish once the stock is added, but you can't ever take the salt out. Plus, that's one of the advantages of homemade stock; you can eliminate all added salt and the resultant broth will be a lot less salty than the mass market stock you buy at the grocery store. Even the allegedly 'lower salt' products still have a ton of salt in them.

I just made some chicken stock from a couple of my old stewing hens, and I don't try to save the meat either, usually. This time, though, I picked it out for Elery's dog, Pancho.

I roast the chicken parts and then put them in the pot with the gizzard, the heart, the neck and yes, the feet. I add carrots, onions, a bay leaf, some black peppercorns and simmer it for hours, or put it in the crockpot all day while I'm at work. I strain out the solids and put the stock into the refrigerator (where it's currently waiting for me) and let it "set up" so I can skim off the fat. Then I can it. My broth, though, isn't "yellow" at all, it's a darker brown, always.

Beef broth always gets made with roasted bones, whatever I have on hand. Always the shortribs because I don't care for them no matter how they are prepared. Neck bones, the very end of the beef shank, whatever I have on hand gets roasted along with carrots, onions, celery, bay leaf, black peppercorns. After they get nicely roasted I put the whole mess, including any drippings, into a big pot and cook it all day long. Strain out the solids and can the broth, and the solids are dog food, just like the chicken parts are.

I seldom use broth by itself, I put it into something, so I don't add more than a pinch of salt and sometimes not that.

Annie

I also use a cooked chicken carcass for broth. I pick the meat off first, then off to the races. I no longer add veggies - One of the test kitchen-type cookbooks did tests that showed it was a waste since the veggies did not add much if anything to the end result.

I do use aromatic veggies when making a soup FROM the already-made broth.

Beef broth is trickier and takes more time. I get the best results from oxtails. The trick is to simmer slowly, skim the carp off the top, condense, strain, condense, strain.

Thomas Keller recommends veal for the best stock, but that's rather dear. He adds aromatic veggies (celery, onion) to the final pot after condensing and straining a couple of pots worth.

Chicken doesn't need all that condensation and straining, IMO.

Most of the flavor in a broth comes from the bones, skin and tendons and not from the meat. Only occasionally do I boil a whole chicken, and when I do, it's the meat and not the broth that is the driving force. When I boil a chicken, I remove the chicken, pick the meat off the bones when it's done and not cooked tod eath, and then return the skin bones and "non meat" parts to the pot and simmer for several more hours.
Usually I use chicken wings for stock, and any wing tips, necks and backs I might have from other chickens. I don't roast the chicken, because mostly I want an "unroasted" chicken type of broth. I add a chunked up onion, with the skin, a couple of washed but unpeeled carrots, the top leafy half of at least one head of celery, thes tems of a bunch of parsley, a leek, several cloves of garlic, whacked with a knife to crack them, a sweet potato with the skin but cut into chunks, 3 or 4 bay leaves and about a teaspoon of peppercorns and some salt...not "enough" but some, as it was my mother's belief that salty water draws the flavor from the meat and bones.
I let that simmer, very very slowly...just so I get an occasional bubble....for about 6 hours. I let it coot to working temperature and strain through muslin....and discard all the "stuff"...I may pick out enough meat for something and label it "Chicken from soup"...but usually all that stuff is just mush and I toss it.
Linda C

I do pretty much what LindaC does, except that I never add salt to broth and never sweet potatoes - I use parsnips instead. My total cooking time rarely exceeds two hours, however. I often poach a chicken and remove the meat when it's just done and use that for other dishes. It only takes an hour to poach a chicken, but I simmer the bones and skin for at least another hour without the meat.

Lars

My mother was the queen of soups. She learned from her mother, my grandmother who used soups to feed her family of 14 during the Great Depression. Coming from those roots, I use only trimmings, scraps, skin and bones for my stocks. I save and freeze leftovers until I have enough to make a pot of stock.

HereÂs how I do it. They key is to roast the bones, etc in the oven until they are dark, golden brown. Then plop them in a pot with a crushed clove or two of garlic, lots of celery, carrots and onions. For chicken stock, I also add the juice of a whole lemon. I learned this from my mother in law. She claims she read somewhere that the lemon juice pulls the minerals out of the bones. IÂve never verified the info but I can tell you it makes a big difference in the flavor of the chicken stock. For beef stock I add just a splash of balsamic vinegar; I figure the acid in the vinegar may act the same way as the lemon juice. It also "rounds out" the flavor of the stock. I put in enough water to cover everything well, bring to a boil then reduce the heat to a slow simmer, uncover and cook all day usually on the woodstove. Then I strain the stock, return it to a boil and skim the foam. I do not reuse the vegetables or any of the meat. I taste the stock at this point and if itÂs too watery, I put it back on the woodstove to reduce more. Cool, skim if thereÂs any fat remaining and freeze. I add salt just before I serve the soup.

Wow, thank you everyone! It sounds like I need to rethink the way I do chicken broth. I rarely have entire chicken carcasses but the bags of legs and thighs sounds like a good way to go. And roasting first! I knew you should roast the beef bones, it never occurred to me with chicken but of course that would make it more flavorful.

This sounds like a great winter project, perfecting beef and chicken broth (which of course must then be made into nice warm comfort food soups).

Thanks so much for all the hints, I do appreciate it.

Ann

I don't use a lot of broth but I have taken to throwing the remains of a rotisserie chicken into a pot for broth. It will simmer all day and taste great. Makes about a quart for the freezer. I don't add additional vegetables but do use everything that is in the bottom of the chicken container.

Moosemac, I am really intrigued by the idea of using fresh lemon juice in a stock. I'm sure it really brightens up the flavor, I must try this.

I forgot, I always toss a half a lemon into the stock pot....and Lars, I use parsnips in chicken stock...AND Sweet potato. Bubbe/renee clued me in....it does add a certain je ne sais quoi.
Linda C

The information in the link provided by GrainLady calls for vinegar. It says it helps extract the calcium. I think lemon sounds better.

Interesting article Grainlady. Thank you.

I make stock or broth different ways. Yesterday I had a leftover chicken carcas from a rottiserie chicken. We only eat the breast anyway, so need to use the rest for something. I tossed it into the pressure cooker for thirty minutes and got a tasty broth.

When I add veggies, I add parsnips, never more than one carrot if any, and I've never used sweet potatoes. I tried the lemon and didn't like it. It's possible it's because I used too much. I also like to add a few cloves to mine.

Ann (prairie love), here's another article you might want to read. I've made broth/stock like this and it was very good too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Essence of Chicken

It's interesting to see how many little differences there are in the way people make their stock.

I make different stocks for different uses. For Chinese soups, I make a light but flavorful stock by poaching a chicken with some ginger and green onions. When the chicken meat is done, I remove it from the carcass for a variety of uses. Then I return the bones and simmer for a couple of hours before straining.

For richer stock, used in hearty soups and gravies, I keep a bag in the freezer into which I put all my carrot parings and trimmings, celery tops and leaves, the green parts of leeks, ends of green onions, and onion bits left over from day to day cooking, and also any random chicken bones that might accumulate from using chicken parts for other meals.

I buy those bags of chicken quarters to cut up into legs and thighs for meals (neither my husband nor I are particularly fond of breast meat) and I set aside the back sections for stock as well.

I love chicken wings, and when I make them I chop the end tips off and throw those into the freezer as well. My husband and I are also quite fond of rotisserie chicken, and I make it regularly...any of it that we or the cats don't polish off goes in with the wing tips.

When I'm looking to make the rich stock, I put all this into a pot, add a whole chicken and some chicken feet if I can get them, along with a couple of chopped carrots, celery and onions, a sprig or two of oregano from my garden, the stems from my latest bunch of cilantro, a handful of dried parsley (or parsley stems if I've got a bunch going),a sprinkle of peppercorns and a few smashed garlic cloves.

All of this gets simmered until the solids are basically a sludge, and then carefully strained. I usually end up with a stock so rich that for many purposes, I must dilute it with water.

I have never thought to add parsnips or sweet potatoes though, and am going to have to give it a try. I like a bit of sweetness in a stock, but sometimes too many carrots can give it a tinny taste, so perhaps that might be a way to add the sweetness without that funny flavor.

For beef stock, the main thing is to have some cheap cuts of beef AND some bones (I like to use marrow bones for richness)...and if it doesn't gross you out, beef feet are terrific as they add both flavor and richness.

So I shouldn't be throwing out the rottiserie chicken carcas? I learn so much from this group.

How much water would you add to make chicken stock from one carcas? And about how many hours is "simmer all day"?

I put the carcass and all it's scraps and jellied broth from the bottom of the carton in a 3 quart pot. ( I like my Lodge apple for this) I fill the pot about 2/3's full with water. It doesn't have to totally cover everything. Bring it to a slow boil then turn to low and let it simmer covered for 4-6 hours. Sometimes 8 hours. If it's not strong enough, I'll leave the lid off for awhile.
I might add more water if I don't have time to deal with it and want to keep it going. Then I strain everything and refrigerate the broth overnight. Next day, I usually remove most of the fat and freeze the remains.
It really requires no fiddling with during the day so it's not an extra chore. I like looking at the apple pot all day too!

I made the chicken broth yesterday and it was pretty tasty. The only problem was this morning when I pulled out the big bowl of stock I realized I didn't have any containers to devote to the freezer. I wound up putting 1 cup of stock into a small ziploc baggie. It was hard trying to get all the air out but it seemed to work ok. I got 6 cups from that one chicken.

So now I probably have a new obsession. I made a bone-in turkey breast for dinner last night and now I have a pot of turkey stock simmering away. I think it will be great to have some home made turkey stock on hand for Thanksgiving.

Thanks for all the tips. If the ziploc bag is a bad idea please let me know.

I freeze stock and soups in ziplock bags all the time, it works very well. I bought plastic "shoeboxes" from the dollar store to put in my freezer, where the bags of soup and stock are stored in line like file cards after they've been frozen flat.

By the way, if while experimenting with making stock, you end up with a batch that just isn't tasty enough or strong enough, there's no shame to adding a bit of prepackaged base rather than just throwing it out. Get the jars of chicken or beef base, not bouillon cubes which are nothing more than salt that's been "flavored" by waving a piece of meat over the jar for a minute. :D

I might as well add my two cents to this, although there are so many great ideas and links already here.
It's my method for making chicken broth and soup.

Here we can buy stripped chicken carcasses packaged in twos in the supermarket, after they've removed most of the meat for their trays of wings, breasts etc. But there's still enough meat on the bones for a great and flavourful soup.

Soup Ingredients:

Homemade chicken stock - about 2 quarts
2 carrots - diced
2 stalks celery - diced
1 leek - diced
1 cup diced rutabaga or orange squash
1/2 cup fine soup noodles
salt & pepper
oil or chicken fat

Ratio of solids to stock should be about 2 cups stock to 1 lb chopped vegetables. Add any more chopped veg if you don't have enough.

Stock ingredients:

1 meaty chicken carcass or piece of whole chicken
2 heads of garlic
1 onion - cut in half
celery stick - sliced
1 carrot sliced
fresh thyme - large sprig
1 bayleaf
black pepper & salt

MAKING STOCK:

1. Early in day or day before:
Preheat oven to 350F. Cut top off heads of garlic. Place on roasting pan together with chicken carcass and sliced onion and drizzle a bit of oil over top of all.
(I had two carcasss to roast as they are sold this way in pairs at our supermarket. I also added a couple of beef bones.)
Roast in oven about 40 minutes or until all is toasted.

2. Put bones into a very large pot. Squeeze one head of the buttery garlic cloves into the stock pot, saving the other head of garlic for adding to the soup. Add the rest of the stock ingredients and fill pot with water to cover. Grind in fresh pepper. Bring to boil, turn down heat, put on lid and simmer for a couple of hours.
Skim off any grey residue that rises to the top.

3. Afterwards, strain the solid debris from the stock ---(REMEMBER you're saving the stock so don't pour it down the sink - as has been done LOL !).
I look through the solids and pick out the meaty chicken pieces to save for the soup. Throw away all the rest of the solid material.
Here I let it cool and refrigerate until next day when it's easy to remove solid fat from top. Otherwise continue to make soup.

MAKING THE SOUP:

1. Sauté the chopped ingredients in a frypan in a TBS of chicken fat or oil until lightly golden. Squeeze out the buttery cloves from the 2nd head of garlic and add to pan.

2. Put soup ingredients including small bits of chicken into large saucepan and add an appropriate amount of stock - about double the amount of liquid to vegetables.
Put on lid and simmerwith lid on for about an hour. Add soup noodles during last 5 minutes.

3. Check seasoning, add salt.

SharonCb