Chicken Bone Broth: Getting Ready for Soup Season
The cicadas are quiet now which means cooler weather is finally in store. I love this time of year because it means I can add soups back to our menu rotations. This is Lace, by the way. John never complains about my meals, but he definitely doesn’t feel the same way about soup as I do, which is why he asked me to write this post. With the return of soups to our menu, we’re cooking and stocking up on chicken bone broth now. Of course it takes more time and energy to prepare our own broth, but for our family, it’s definitely worth it.
Cost Effective
We’re always looking for ways to save in our household, and making our own bone broth is one of those ways. For a cost comparison, we’ll use a bone broth that’s made with “organic chicken” (but doesn’t explain if it was pastured or not) that is currently sold at HEB vs. the bone broth we can make with our chicken backs. To make 2-3 quarts of our own broth we’d spend $3 for the chicken backs. To be conservative, we can add a few dollars to this just in case we don’t already have the vegetables on hand that we want to add to our recipe (but chances are we do). If we bought a little over 2 quarts-worth of the comparable broth at HEB, we’d spend around $45. Now we’re talking savings! We could even compare our homemade broth to the cheap kind of bone broth at HEB where we’d spend $15 for a little over 2 quarts-worth. We’re still coming out ahead here, and we can be more confident in the broth we’re consuming because we know how the bird was raised and how we made the broth, too.
Easy to Make
With slow-cookers and Instant pots, making your own broth is simple. There are numerous recipes online for both appliances. We use them both for making broth depending on our time constraints. Here are some links to recipes for the slow-cooker and the Instant pot to get you started if you’ve never made your own bone broth before. You can even add in some chicken feet for the extra gelatin boost.
Easy to Store
We store broth in our freezer year-round. We have larger portions in freezer bags for our soups and use ice trays to make smaller portions for recipes that call for ¼ of a cup or so.
Other Uses
Chicken stock/broth is a versatile kitchen staple that can be used beyond soups. You can also use stock to:
thin out vegetable baby purees (I made broth without seasonings specifically for this purpose.)
use in place of water when cooking grains/rice and even steaming vegetables for extra flavor
make different sauces
supplement with milk/cream in mashed potatoes to make a healthier dish.
Ice cube portions really come in handy for all of the above, as well as when someone in our family is sick and wants a mug of broth.
Make Your Pets Happy
To top it all off, our dog loves when I make broth because that means she gets the remaining carcass. After cooking for so long or at such a high pressure, the bones become mush which eliminates the bone-splintering concern for pet owners. We supplement portions of the carcass with our dog’s normal food, and she thinks it’s such a treat! And here again, we can stretch our money a little further by not using as much of her normal dog food in the days following our broth making.
Pre-order Your Chicken Backs Today
Are you ready to start stocking your freezer with this versatile kitchen staple? Pre-order your chicken backs and/or feet today to get ready for this soup season!
And now if you’ll excuse me, my pot of chicken tortilla soup is calling me. If you have any favorite soup recipes you wouldn’t mind sharing I’d love to try them, too. Share the recipe link in the comments, an email or Facebook message.
Roasting backs, cooking in the Instant pot, cooling in the ice bath and fridge to then scrape the fat layer off, measuring out portions to freeze and feeding the remaining carcass to our dog (Note: the broth in the glass jar was actually from a different batch I made with different ingredients which is why there’s a difference in coloring.)
Happy broth making and let the soup-making begin!