055 Making Chicken Stock | Grill Like A Mother Podcast

Making chicken stock from scratch is easy! In Episode 55, Taryn covers how to make homemade chicken stock, including tips and tricks to help you succeed. This is the third in a series about smoking a whole chicken and this episode helps you get the most out of your smoked bird!

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RECIPES MENTIONED

These are some of the recipes mentioned in the episode, all of which are on Hot Pan Kitchen.

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TRANSCRIPT

Taryn Solie: Hello grillers, and thank you for tuning in today! I am your host, Taryn Solie, and I am here to give you some grilling inspiration. In this episode I will be going over one recipe in detail from my recipe website, Hot Pan Kitchen, including the full ingredient list and instructions as well as some tips and tricks to help you along the way.

Today’s episode is the third in a series about one of the most popular proteins to cook – chicken. The first in the series, episode 53, went over how to spatchcock a chicken, which means to remove the backbone so it lies flat. Episode 54, the second in the series, discussed smoking a spatchcock chicken. The next couple of episodes are going to go over recipes that use that smoked chicken.

For this episode I’ll be telling you how to use the carcass of a cooked chicken to make chicken stock. This is a great way to get the most out of your chicken. Whenever I make my own chicken stock I feel like the broth I get is so much more flavorful than what I can get at the grocery store. And it’s honestly not hard at all. You can even do it with a rotisserie chicken you buy at the store if you don’t have the time to cook or smoke one yourself.

Before we jump into what ingredients you’ll need, I want to talk briefly about the difference between stock and broth. Stock is typically made using bones and broth is typically made using meat. That’s the main difference. Because stock is made from bones, it will often be gelatinous, or jiggly, once it’s been in the fridge due to the collagen in the bones and skin of the carcass it was cooked with. Other than that, there’s not much difference between the two and you can use them interchangeably in recipes. And in fact I’ll be referring to this recipe as both chicken broth and chicken stock, but my meaning is the same.

Okay, now for ingredients! Grab the following:

1 carcass of a cooked or smoked chicken, cleaned of all its meat and broken down;
1 small to medium onion;
1 small shallot;
10 baby carrots, or 2 to 3 regular carrots;
2 to 3 celery stalks with leaves, cut into large chunks;
⅓ cup of mushroom stems from shiitake or cremini mushrooms;
1-2 large stems of fresh thyme;
1 dried bay leaf;
1 tablespoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt; and
14 to 18 cups of water, enough to cover everything in the pot.

A couple of notes about the ingredients and the recipe in general. The carcass doesn’t need to be broken down into small pieces, it just needs to be broken down enough to fit in your pot. Typically for me this means removing the appendages – the legs, thighs, and wings – from the trunk of the bird.

For the mushrooms, what I do is get enough mushrooms to use them in another dish – like a soup or a stir fry. But I only use the tops of the mushrooms in that dish. I remove the stems and place them in a little baggie and put them in the freezer to then make stock with later. If that’s too much forethought for you, you absolutely can just use whole mushrooms in the stock. I strongly recommend using stems from shiitake mushrooms as they’ll have the most flavor, but cremini will work too.

Now a note about kosher salt – this recipe uses Diamond Crystal kosher salt. I prefer this brand as it’s less salty by weight than other salts, which leaves a little more room for error when you’re salting your dishes. If you have a different brand of kosher salt I would use a little less salt, probably starting around ½ a tablespoon. While this stock is not particularly high in sodium, remember you can always add salt but you can’t take it away.

And last thing to note – make sure you get as much meat as you can off your chicken before making the stock! You don’t need it to flavor the stock and there are so many great recipes you can use it in – chicken salad, chicken enchiladas, etc. If you don’t think you’ll use the meat in the next day or two, you can always place it in the freezer, just make sure it’s in a freezer-safe container or bag.

Okay let’s talk about how to make chicken stock!

First put the broken down chicken carcass, including skin and bones, in a large stock pot. Next you’ll prep the veggies. Peel and cut up the onion and shallot into large pieces and place both in the pot with the chicken pieces. Add in the carrots, celery, mushroom stems, fresh thyme, dried bay leaf, and kosher salt to the pot.

Use a measuring cup to measure the water – tap water is fine- and pour it into the pot as well. You want to make sure the water level is high enough for everything to be submerged. Place the pot on a stove burner with the lid on and bring it to a boil over high heat. Then reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for 3.5 to 4 hours, adjusting the lid to let a little steam escape.

This is where you can go on about your day. Check on the pot every once in a while, maybe every 30 to 60 minutes, but you shouldn’t need to stir it or check it frequently. You will need to stay home with it though – don’t leave your house with a pot on the stove!

After the broth mixture is done simmering, remove the bones, skin, cooked veggies, and herbs from the pot with a pair of long tongs, either into another large pot or a different container. Discard them once cooled – and you will want to wait until they’re fully cooled because otherwise you’ll end up with literal hot garbage, and no one wants that.

Strain the broth through a fine mesh strainer into another pot to remove any last debris. At this point you can taste the broth and add more salt if needed. Once it’s salted to your liking, use a ladle to scoop the broth into storage containers – I use mason jars to keep the broth in the fridge or silicone molds like Souper Cubes to freeze the broth. I’ll provide a link to both on the show notes page. Wait until the stock is completely cooled then put a lid on the container. Store it in the fridge for 3 to 4 days or in freezer-safe containers for several months.

And that’s it! You have just made your own chicken stock! I use stock like this in all our favorite soups – bacon corn chowder, potato soup, and I have several squash soups I use it in too. It really makes such a difference in the flavor of the soup. I think you’ll love it.

I also wanted to note, you can make chicken stock in a slow cooker if you have one and it’s more convenient for you. Just follow the directions as written, except you’ll place everything into the slow cooker then cook on high for 4 hours. Use the same methods to remove the cooked veggies and carcass and strain the broth before storing.

I have a post on my website, Hot Pan Kitchen, with pictures and the directions I just gave for how to make chicken stock if you’re more of a visual person. I’ll put a link to that post in the show notes page for this episode. To get the show notes page, you can either go to my main website at Hot Pan Kitchen dot com and click on podcast in the main menu, or you can click on the link provided in whatever podcast app you’re listening on.

If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform. And don’t miss out on the next episode in this chicken series, where we’ll be going over a great recipe to use up some of the leftover chicken meat! Be sure and listen in for that.

That’s it for today, thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep grilling like a mother.