If you have not tried making homemade chicken broth, I hope this post will encourage you to do so! It really is SO easy & SO much healthier than what you may find on the grocery store shelves, especially if you are using healthy chickens. (Support your local small farmers & buy pastured chickens from them.)

 

I used to store my broth in the freezer, but I am trying to clear up freezer space & wanted to have broth for the pantry. I am NOT an experienced canner, but have been present and helped when my MIL was canning on several occasions. She bought a pressure canner for me a few years ago & although it has been used a few times in the past, now that I’ve started making chicken broth, I am using it quite a bit. (We are not green thumbs & have not successfully raised a huge garden as of yet, but these canning skills I am picking up now – I can just tell – are going to pay off whenever we figure out how to grow stuff!)And I have several more chicken carcasses waiting for me, so I’ve got lots of practice ahead.

 

The pressure canner I have is here: Presto 1755 16-Quart Pressure Canner

 

Since I cracked the crock to our crockpot, I’ve been slow cooking broth in my Instant Pot. Here’s the one I have: IP-DUO80 V2 My old crockpot may not have been good for this though, because it seemed to run pretty hot on low. I would have food boiling away on low, so you may not want to let your chicken broth cook the length of time in the recipe, if yours runs hot too.

 

If desired, try storing in varying measurements so you don’t have large amounts leftover because the recipe only required a small amount. For now, I’ve got some stored in pints & quarts.

 

Check out our video here: Bone Broth recipe from our own pastured chickens

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Homemade Chicken Broth

Ingredients

  • 1 chicken carcass, fat & any leftover pieces of a whole chicken not eaten
  • 1 onion roughly chopped
  • 1-2 celery stalks roughly chopped
  • 1 carrot roughly chopped
  • 1 bay leaf
  • thyme
  • salt
  • water

Instructions

  1. The above ingredients are not an exact measurement, because you really can't go wrong. If you prefer not to add some of these things (other than the chicken itself), you will still have wholesome broth.

    Place all chicken pieces into crockpot (or instant pot on slow cook - you will not be pressure cooking in this recipe) along with veggies & seasonings. Fill the crockpot leaving an inch or 2 space from the top. Cover with lid & set crockpot to low setting. Cook for 18, 24 & even up to 48 hrs (maybe even longer - that's all I've tried).

    **UPDATE - I now pressure cook my chicken broth in the instant pot for 1 hr on high pressure. Simply fill the water up to the PC line in the instant pot, if pressure cooking. And then set to venting to manually release pressure.**

    Ladle all of the ingredients through a strainer into a large pot to be sure small bones, etc. do not end up in the broth.

    Cool in the fridge, skim fat from top, then transfer to containers for the freezer to be used as needed (IF USING JARS, MAKE SURE TO LEAVE ENOUGH SPACE in the jars, the contents will expand during freezing & the jars will break!) Or, you can pressure can your broth to store in the pantry as we did in our video. Follow USDA safety guidelines, as your manual may not be updated.