When broth is made using the entire bird, we turn skin, cartilage, tendons, and ligaments into a gelatin-rich liquid. The bones contribute minerals and the all-important marrow, so that's why I like to crack large bones that contain marrow before roasting them for making bone broth. People just don't realize the healthy contribution to our diets these once common cooking methods provided. When I read a recipe that says to cook a couple chicken breasts to make "broth" I shudder.

You can also increase the gelatin by adding a few chicken feet or a split pig's foot to the pot, along with the whole chicken. And don't forget to add vinegar, which helps extract minerals from the bones AND the vegetables, even when diluted with the water.

When you use large beef bones for broth, you can actually cook them more than once and still get a healthy dose of minerals from them.

-Grainlady

sounds yummy!...I have discovered that the difference between a whole bird and several carcasses is SKIN! Save the skin when serving a whole roast chicken and dump it into the soup pot....and if someone has eaten most of the skin because it was so delicious and crispy, buy 3 or 4 wings and toss in the pot with the bones. There's lots of skin on the wings to give up their flavor and gelatin.
I wish I would have a pot of soup bubbling away on this cold snowy day....but I have to many containers of frozen soup in the freezer to justify it.

I'm in the same boat, Linda. I am longing to simmer or braise or bake something, but have too much already on hand.

I'm in the same boat with sewing. Neither I nor my daughters/granddaughters needs another coat or purse or bag or dress or doll clothes, yet I feel desperate to make... Something! Must be the falling snow.

I'll try to content myself enjoying Mimi's soup vicariously. Sigh. It will be delicious.

Mini, Sounds good!

Fortunately the Spanish grocery store near me always has chicken feet so I can have them when making broth.

Thanks for posting. I've used different techniques for making chicken stock but haven't tried this. I have a number of go-to recipes of Ina's I love and own all her cookbooks so don't know how I missed this one.

I bought a couple of turkey thighs yesterday to use in making split pea soup (DB won't eat pork or ham), but it's been too hot here and will be in the 80s for the next ten days or so. I guess I can crank up the A/C, but I was hoping for some cool weather and maybe some rain. I do have turkey stock in the freezer from the turkey I cooked for Christmas. I think if I cook the turkey thighs in the PC it won't heat up the kitchen too much. If the weather had been cooler, I would have bought a whole chicken. I should look for chicken feet also - I always forget to do that, but I think I can find them easily enough.

Chicken stock is one of the few uses I've gotten from my slow cooker, but I can fit a whole chicken with vegetables in it.

I hope you are enjoying your cool weather.

Often I have to resort to boxed broth, but there is nothing like the real thing. I'll be trying it with a whole chicken. Recently used backs and necks, and that was pretty good.

Seeing your post makes me smile, Lars: I'd be doing the happy dance if it was in the high 80s here! Since Friday maximums have been over 100F at least, and over 110F the past two days (which has made working in a poorly airconditioned canteen- not their fault because the layout of the building precludes good airconditioning- just a JOY, I tell you :-) ).

Having grown up in an environment where chicken soup was as prevalent as water, I never made it without using the whole chicken cut up into pieces and then boiled until the bones turned white. When I re-married several years ago, my wife made chicken soup for me for the first time and she ONLY used thighs. At first, I was aghast, but she quickly alleviated my fears with a simple explanation - the most flavorful meat in the chicken is the thigh (I agreed) and there's only one bone, and a large one at that. Thus, no small bone fragments to accidentally choke you.

Since that time, my entire outlook on chicken soup has changed. First, I no longer make it, she does, and second, it tastes much better than what I had been eating for the first part of my life. Live and learn.

Hmm...do some people not strain their soup? I strain, so no bones, and then usually refrigerate overnight to remove fat.

This time I didn't because this method seemed to leave less fat rising to the top. Plus, a little sheen of fat reminds me of my dear mom's chicken soup.

I love love love making chicken bone broth--using Ina's method or others. I didn't know that about adding vinegar to help extract minerals from the bones & veggies, but I'll try that next time thanks grainlady! So good to make a really large batch and have some bone broth to freeze. Great thread, lots of helpful info!

Smiles,

Sooz

Lemon juice works too....and I like the flavor better than vinegar.

Lars, I'm in LA too and this heat wave is just unbelievable. I think I jinxed El Nino by getting a new roof and first-time flood insurance.

Btw, you can get chicken feet at WF.

fawnridge, that's how chicken soup was made when I was growing up too, chop up a chicken, throw it in the pot, cook it all day. It was usually a young rooster that was culled from the flock or an old stewing hen, but the hen was preferable.

Since we process our own chickens, I keep the feet for broth, and I make large batches of broth and can them for later use. Because we cut up and package the chickens ourselves, I can reserve breasts for other uses (like company dinners) and keep my favorite dark meat for soup and our own dinner.

I never add vinegar because I dislike the flavor and I don't add lemon juice because my mother is allergic to lemons, so I just make do without acidity. It still works fine for me.

Colleen, I think I'd melt at those temps. Right now it's 7F and going down, below zero for the first time this year by Saturday night. Really, though, it's been an extremely moderate winter so far. I'd happily send you a bit of cool if I could figure out how, just don't send me back any hot! I actually like winter but I just hate summer.

Annie

It was 117F today and some lady in Perth did an experiment baking cupcakes on the dashboard of her car. They turned out pretty good.

Fawnridge....I'll take some of your hot!
Even though my grandmother that lived close kept chickens, we never used a whole chicken for soup. Chicken soup was made from what you might throw away, the carcass from a roast chicken, or maybe the backs and wings from a fried chicken....there never was much meat in it.
The old hen or rooster made chicken fricasee.....which was one of my favorite meals!
You put the cut up chicken into a dutch oven, skin side oven and cooked until the skin was browned...in batches so as not to crowd the pot. When all was browned, you added salt, pepper, a couple of chunked up onions a few chunked up carrots, a cut up stalk of celery and enough water to almost cover the chicken. cover the pot and simmer until the chicken tests done....about 1 1/2 hours. Even with a good pot, some water will have boiled off, that's OK. Next you make a slurry of about a cup of milk and 2 tablespoons of flour and stir that into the gently bubbling broth, taste and add salt if needed, make a quick biscuit/dumpling from 2 cups flour, 1 T baking powder 1 tsp salt and 1/2 cup Crisco....during the war you used less crisco and maybe added some bacon fat....add enough milk to make a soft dough and drop globs on top of the softly simmering chicken stew. Put the lid on the pot, and don't peek for 25 minutes.
Serve with mashed potatoes.
Now I would flour the chicken and season before browning, cook in chicken broth and p[erhaps add a sprig of thyme to the broth, and add lots of parsley to the dumplings...oh and maybe skip the mashed potatoes!

Saw this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD8umESnKyc

I can tell you that what she made would not taste like chicken stock. It would taste more like vegetarian stock.

Not enough chicken for the amount of water. Too much vegetables and too salty.

dcarch

1 tablespoon of salt to 4 quarts of water? Too salty?

I don't know, but Ina Garten is famous for using way too much salt. I never salt stock. Ever. I often reduce it in cooking and I don't want to build up the salt. The important thing is to remember, if I'm making soup out of it, to make sure to put enough salt in the soup.

Ina uses no salt in her stock, as is the case in general. She does salt in specific quantities that can sound like a lot in her dishes.

I've never seen anyone salt like Anne Burrell.

I salt my stock while cooking. Salt does things besides making it taste "salty". I salt lightly and when...if...it's reduced it's fine. The only time I had too salty broth was when using chickens that had "solution" added,.. I usually use all natural chicken.

Yes, too salty. In general, I agree with WIKI:

“Salt is usually not added or only minimally added to the stock,
since most stocks are reduced to make soups and sauces, and excessive salt
will make the final dish too salty.”

I also believe that no salt adds more flavor, based on the chemical law of solubility that chemicals flow in the direction of less concentration. Less salt molecules, more room for favor molecules.

I am a stock extremist.

dcarch

I keep a bag of wing tips in the freezer. Sometimes I add them to a roasted chicken carcass or a package of whole wings. Never add salt to my stock, but if I'm using a roasted carcass there's obviously already salt present.

For ready made I only buy unsalted chicken, veggie, or beef stock.

The laws of diffusion tells us that 2 solutions of different concentration of a solution, separated by a permeable membrane, both the solute (salt and flavoring agents) and the solvent (water) travel across the barrier ( the cell walls of the onions, celery and meat) and form equal concentrations.
As Grandma said....the salted water draws the flavor out of the vegetables and the meat. She was right but didn't know the reason.
The chemical law of solubility has to do with the solubility of gasses in a liquid.
It's been a looooong time since those chem classes, but I aced them!

My no salt in stock reasoning:

All gases can be a liquid, and all liquids can be a gas.

I think the term “Diffusion” is used more often for mixing gases less
for mixing liquid solutions. Diffusion works on “Brownian motion” energy.

And “solution” can be used for gases, but is use more for liquid/solids,
especially when you are talking about cooking.

The condition for molecular transfer separation by a membrane has
nothing to do with diffusion or solubility. It is know as “osmosis”. It happens
every time you cook, but no one talks about osmosis in cooking.

In the case of making stock, the damaged cells will have concentrated
flavor molecules migrate (dissolve) into the less concentrated water by the law of entropy.

In the case of undamaged cells, water will “Osmosis” spontaneously through
a semi-permeable cell membrane into a region of
higher solute flavor concentration. When the cells rupture
from cooking, the dissolved flavor will become the resultant stock.

dcarch

The term is Brownian...``

of course all gasses are liquid, given the low temperature sufficient to achieve that...nitrogen is liquid at minus 320 degrees F. Not in any way relevant to this discussion.
The molecular transfer across a permeable membrane has everything to do with diffusion and solubility. Osmosis is the process by which concentrations of solutions separated by a permeable membrane become equal. And gasses absolutely can be dissolved....and the term is "in solution".
The verb for the process known as "osmosis" is osmose. Molecules don't spontaneously "osmosis" (sic).
Bottom line, I add a little salt to my stock as it helps the transfer of flavors from the elements in the broth to the broth itself.
has zero to do with Brownian motion, nor the temperature at which a gas becomes liquid...it has to do with molecules of NaCl migrating across the cell barrier and displacing other molecules which then enter and flavor a broth.
Feel free not to salt your stock, but I am telling you why I salt mine.

I very lightly salt my stock and it has nothing to do with chemistry, I just like the way it tastes. I tend to very lightly salt it while the chicken is roasting with the vegetables, and before I add water. When the stock/broth has reduced to the level I like, I taste and add more seasonings if necessary.

My broth/stock is generally made with the feet, backs, necks, wing tips and various "trimmings". The chicken itself, minus these peripherals, is used for a meal.

However, old stewing hens were seldom made into anything except soup or stew, hence the term "stewing". An hour and a half in LindaC's fricassee would have been enough for a young rooster but one of Grandma's old hens, several years old? Nope, they'd sure need more than that! I don't even try to stew them, I grind them up into chicken sausage, several hours and sometimes they are still stringy, tough and inedible. I've even tried the pressure cooker without good results, so it's sausage and stock.

Annie

A bit boring but i've done the same method for years. A roasted chicken dinner, very comforting. I roast two organic chickens using the oven roasting heat. Cut some onions in half, cut side down in the roasting pan for 'feet' under the chickens....add some big carrots cut in large chunks and a few celery ribs. Garlic. Add a cup of water and roast. Another 1/2 sheet pan of mixed veg and root veggies go on the lower rack half way through the chicken roasting. Kale or collards as a side dish. I also have a mixed sprouted grain side and/or a bean, usually white beans. Sometimes black beans.

A Saturday or Sunday no brainer dinner but comfort food. Pan juices and veg make a nice gravy. Stock pot is already simmering with veg cuttings and h2o when we sit down for a nice meal.

That roast chicken is then picked of meat, usually more than half left over, then the bones, the carcass back, is cracked and broken then into the stock pot. I always have chicken feet, (great pup snacks), in the freezer. And duck paws frozen in packs with duck necks for stock.

The other chicken i cut into parts and give it a spice rub and marinade for a bbq style roasted chicken dinner. Pick more of the meat and fridge it.

I end up with a dozen or more meals that are not at all left-overs. Chicken salad, a few qrts of soup...add some of the picked chicken to each qrt, then some of the finely sliced greens uncooked i set aside, some rice or some of the beans, fridge those container, then top with the stock/broth once it is chilled, then freeze. A few smaller pints i fill with beans and rice, then top with stock as well for the freezer. Gives me quick options later for soups. I often food saver some picked chicken with a spice rub that can be pulled out of the freezer for tacos or a filling for arepas...easy small sauce pan heat-up with some miropoix and chili sauce. Still have a few pints of just stock i freeze.

Produce is expensive. My garden produce is special enough that canned or purchased stock/broth is not worthy. Making our own stock is practically free. Just the stovetop heat cost. And maybe i just enjoy it. I'm making my own choices and using basic cooking skills.

I never salt it. Enough sodium in the veg. Celery and carrots and greens have plenty of salt. Fresh greens i may add later when i make soups and stews from the stock/broth have sodium as well. I may add some parm to a soup later. I adjust for salt to the table. A spicy garlic yogurt salsa as a topping for a stew or soup is huge in flavor and i may not want an extra salty.

We made sea salt last spring and find a finishing salt much better added when needed, a pinch, at the table, is a better flavor enhancer as a last minute ingredient.

I've not thought much about the canned or boxed broths. I've never used them since i make my own. (I did buy a few boxed organic ones in a panic one holiday thinking i may run out of my own...). I just visualize a big factory vat of boiling old leftover chicken parts made with a big dollar sign and flavor enhancers added...not made with love.

ATK has Swanson as the consistent winner (regular and low sodium). I believe there's also unsalted now.

Mimi, yes Swanson does have unsalted now. I buy that and Kitchen Basics unsalted when on sale.

While there's nothing like homemade, good boxed is a decent substitute unless you're eating a bowl of plain broth.

Agree, CindMac. I use the boxed stuff for cooking, but really want homemade for soup, especially chicken noodle ;-)

Yeah, definitely for chicken noodle! I have no hesitation using the boxed stuff for other soups like gumbo, roasted red pepper, French onion, butternut, etc.

I often start a soup recipe with boxed broth, there is always a box in the refrig ready to thin a gravy or steam a vegetable in or moisten a casserole.......and now you have me thinking bad thoughts....
Imagining a "broth factory" with giant vats of discarded chicken bits, beaks, innards boiling away with various misshapen onions, wilted parsley and the outsides of baby carrots before they are pared down....
Just checked the box in my refrig, it says water and concentrated chicken stock.....powdered carrots natural yeast extract ( meaning natural MSG) and sugar.
Scary stuff!!!

Sharing- I took advantage of the sale and bought another roaster chicken @ $.80/lb, and made stock yesterday. I let the chicken simmer ~ 20 or so minutes longer before taking it out, so about an hour and 20 min., and I could tell the increase in toughness of the meat, with a bit of drying out.

The temp also got away from me and boiled a bit, whereas the first stock I watched more closely and didn't allow to boil

So, what I've learned is that I will keep the stock JUST simmering for at most an hour-just enough to cook the chicken through, then pull the chicken out and remove all meat before returning carcass to the stock.

"A number of consumer groups have claimed that certain food ingredients,
such as autolyzed yeast and hydrolyzed protein, are MSG in disguise.
They are not. Autolyzed yeast and hydrolyzed proteins, among other
ingredients, are completely natural ingredients that happen to be have
substantial amounts of glutamates, but nowhere near the concentration
found in MSG. While a small subset of people may be sensitive to even
these small levels of glutamate, these ingredients are always clearly
identified on the labels so that, as with all food sensitivities and
allergies, people can be aware of ingredients they'd like to avoid.
These are natural ingredients that are definitely of grave concern for
people who are sensitive to them, but they are not MSG."

Source: Myths and Misconceptions: MSG