Once you’re done eating your chicken wings, or baked chicken, or whatever that has bones, follow these steps:
1. If you’re lazy, put the bones in a ziplock bag and freeze them until you’re not lazy. I have many a bag of frozen bones in my freezer.
2. Once you’re not lazy:
3. Preheat oven to 300 degrees on bake.
4. Put all your chicken bones on an oven safe pan (this doesn’t just have to be chicken wing bones, it can be a chicken carcass or two, too). I find you need about 3 servings of chicken wings to have enough bones to boil, or a chicken carcass. or mix and match them! Don’t skip the roasting and go straight to the boiling, it won’t taste nearly as good. The more bones you have, the faster the broth will be ready. I try to fill a large freezer ziplock bag (a gallon worth), and use about 3/4 of those in my slow cooker. You can use more and it works faster too!
5. Stick them in the oven and roast for at least 2 hours – the bones get dark and brittle and much tastier, sometimes 3-4 hours is cool too. You don’t have to wait until the oven is preheated to stick them in.
6. Using a slow cooker: If you have a slow cooker, use it. If you don’t have one, buy one, even used, they’re not very much and if you’re going to try eating like this you’ll need one. Makes your life way easier and the broth turns out way better. Put the bones in the slow cooker and fill it up as much as you can with (filtered) water. I’ll go into the water issue later. Add a bay leaf if you want! My slow cooker is a 4 quart slow cooker, and I fill the water almost to the top.
Using a pot: Take them out of the oven and put them in a big pot of filtered water. The bigger the pot, the longer you have to boil the bones. Also add the bay leaf.
7. Using a slow cooker: Turn on high for approx. 8 hours, or until the broth looks opaque.
Using a pot: Bring the pot of water and bones to a boil. Turn down and simmer forever (like 24 hours) because a pot takes forever so don’t use a pot. If there’s a lot of meat and goodness on your bones, the broth can turn almost white in about 8 hours. If you’re using chicken wing bones, I find this takes almost 30 hours. Just let it simmer until the broth starts looking opaque. The longer you let it cook, the better. Or use a slow cooker for about 8 hours.
9. Store in the freezer! – pour into ice-cube trays so you can stock up on ice-cube broth for other recipes and gravy, and store in containers for soup. You should be trying to drink about a cup of this stuff a day. It’s full of gut healing ingredients. (It’ll need a LOT of salt, but it’s surprisingly good with just salt. Obviously pepper is good too). You know how chicken broth is supposed to be good for you when you’re sick? Well that store bought chicken broth/bouillon on isn’t good for you. at all. This is the real stuff, and it’s really good!
10. Otherwise store in fridge and eat within 4 days.
Eat with salt. Tons of salt. And pepper if you want, etc.
Also useful is a pressure cooker for the boiling part. Throw the bones in and let it hiss lightly for as little as 30 minutes. I often let it go for about an hour and voilà excellent broth. I have never tried roasting the bones beforehand so that’s next.
Pressure cookers are on sale at Canadian Tire about 3 times each year – @$80. Thrift stores can also be good but the newer types have better lid locking technology eg: avoid your grandmother’s pressure cooker….
Great blog, btw, and super clear. It is going to help a lot of people!
I’m actually going to edit this post today. I wasn’t using a slow cooker for broth because I didn’t like the taste, but it was because I wasn’t roasting the bones! Now I’m using a slow cooker and it’s way easier.
Cool idea, Mikhaila!
I have a few questions.
1. Could you specify the ratio of bones to water? I’m not sure what you define as a serving of chicken wings or the size of the pot/slow cooker you’re using. That and I don’t always eat wings. Grams to ml would be useful, but I can work with vague measurements like cups or handfuls if you don’t have a food scale.
2. Do you think this will work with bones that have way less meat on them? Mine often look bleached by the time I’m done gnawing on them, and I’ll often crack em open and eat the marrow/spinal goodness 😛
3. Was the explanation behind the water being filtered -I’m guessing with Brita- intended for another post, or did you just forget?
Next time I make it I’ll measure out the bones and water and edit the post. It’s totally fine not to have any meat left, I eat all of it too, even the cartilage most of the time. The marrow is probably better to keep for the broth though… And I did forget about the water. I’ll edit that when I edit the ratio of bones to water 🙂 In the next couple of days. Just to give you a quick idea, if I’m eating a chicken and making it into broth, I use the whole chicken carcass and approx. 4.5L of water. I’ll write some more examples up in the next couple of days!
Okay so ratio wise it’s approximately 4 L of water to 2.5 L of bones… The fewer the bones, the longer you have to slow cook it in order to get broth.
Hey Mikhaila,
you said you are going to explain why it’s important to use filtered water.
Is that post still coming? And by filtered, do you mean one of those Brita filters?
Also when i posted your dad’s diet i decided to finally start an elimination diet. Luckily i like everything on that list 🙂 Thanks for posting it
Best,
Sebastian
https://mikhailapeterson.com/2017/11/06/filtered-water/ done
Is it supposed to not reduce any of the liquid? My broth tastes very bland, it looks opaque but I’ll be reducing it on the stove afterwards because it has almost no taste.
Because a slow cooker doesn’t reduce liquid.
How does your broth taste? I did it for 8 hours with 3 carcasses of a chicken and a bunch of wings.
you need to add a LOT of salt. If your broth is opaque you should be good after the salt. Having it without salt is pretty bland, but with the salt it tastes really good. Let me know if you’re still having problems. More salt than you think you need.
I see, yeah the salt really made a difference come to think of it…
I was very surprised to see how gelatinous the broth was when I cooled in overnight in the fridge, it’s a great consistency for storing though!
Thank you.
Leave a comment