Homemade Broth Using Food Scraps!

It's easy to get cans or boxes of broth at the supermarkets to use in recipes, but have you ever tried to make your own?  It is so delicious and really much easier to fit into your day than you might think.

You can start with a whole chicken:

Roast a whole chicken in the oven for one hour. 

Roast or fry some cut up chicken from the supermarket.

Or pick up a rotisserie chicken.  I pull the meat off the bones, and we eat these parts as part of a balanced dinner.  hehe.

Rotisserie Chicken.

Any cooked chicken on the bone will make great tasting chicken broth.  You can eat the chicken and just use the bones and meat that gets left behind. 

Chicken carcass from a rotisserie chicken.

Remove the meat and save the carcass for your broth. Broth from bones that you would have thrown away!

Next you need some vegetables, like celery, carrots and onions.

Or you can use the scraps from these:

I save up my scraps in the freezer for broth.  Carrot peelings, onions skins, mushroom stems, parsley stems or parsley that's getting old, celery leaves and tops, etc.

Use your food scraps in homemade broth!  Onion skins add a lot of color to broth.

If you need to, quarter up an additional onion or two, chop a few carrots, or throw in a few stalks of celery.

Leave the roots and skins on your onions when making broth.

Throw it all together in a pot.  Add some bay leaves, salt and peppercorns, and cover with water.  Bring to a boil, and then lower to a simmer.  

Cover with water and bring to a boil. Ooops, there's the string from my rotisserie chicken.

Simmer your stock on the stove top over low heat for several hours.

Or put into the oven at 350 degrees for several hours.

Or put in your slow cooker for 8-10 hours.  You could even do this while you sleep.

Or put in a pressure cooker for 30 minutes at high pressure.  Find directions on this blog on January 8, 2014. 

Pour into a colander placed over a container that will catch the broth.

I like to put my broth into the refrigerator overnight.  In the morning, the fat has solidified and is easily removed.


Sometimes it can be removed in sheets, but other times it breaks up and has to be skimmed off.  It is still easier to remove in this state.

Put into containers and store in your freezer until ready to use.  

3 quarts of broth from a carcass, food scraps and some seasoning. 

I prefer freezing it in pints or quarts because I will use it in those quantities.  

I always label with a date so I use the oldest first and type of broth.  When you make your own, even the chicken broth has color.

I hope you will try this.  It really is that easy!