Chicken broth (Grandma's style)

10' to start it, 10' at the end to save it in jars, is all you need to have liters of delicious homemade chicken broth - you're ready for months of recipes !

Prep Time10

Cook Time9

Course: Side Dish, Soup, Staples

Cuisine: French

Keyword: affordable, Comfort food, delicious, easy, freezes, staple, versatile

Servings: 12

Ingredients

1 chicken carcass, or bones from a rotisserie chicken (keep bones from all chickens you eat, in a bag in the freezer, to make broth)
1 onion, roughly chopped (fresh or frozen)
2 carrots, roughly chopped (fresh or frozen)
2 stacks of celery, roughly chopped (when preparing celery, just wash the outer pieces and put them in the chicken boens bag in the freezer))
2 green leaves from a leek, optional (when you're cooking leeks, keep the outer leaves and add them in the chicken bones bag, in the freezer)
5-6 parsley stems (keep the elaves for another use)
2 sprigs of thyme, or 1 tsp dried thyme
2-3 bay leaves (fresh if possible)
15 ml apple cider vinegar (don't skip)
Coarse salt, back peppercorns

Instructions

In a large pot on medium-high heat, you just need to sauté onions, carrots, celery, leeks if you have, and chicken bones, until golden brown.
Fill your pot with water. Add vinegar, thyme and bay leaves, a pinch of coarse salt, and about 5-6 black peppercorns.
Bring the pot to a light simmer with very little bubbles.You don't want to boil it and get large bubbles, flavor won't be the same.
Then leave it to simmer gently on the stove for a minimum of 9 hours (and up to 24h). You don't need to watch it or stir it. Just leave it and go live your life - or to bed :-)
After 9 to 24h, strain the broth in a colander, and store in jars. Discard what's in the colander.
Or, just take laddles of broth and pour them into the jars. You'll get a few herbs pieces in your broth, which I also like. Broth looks more "authentic" when not filtered :-)
Store for up to 5 days in the fridge, or months in the freezer.

Notes

When the broth cools off, you'll see a layer of fat on the top of the jar, which will solidify. You may remove it. But actually, the fat contains lots of flavor, so it's totally up to you to keep it, or discard it. The broth is still good, even without the fat.
Save all the bones and carcasses you get from chicken dishes. Freeze them in a large bag that will allow you to add more over time. Then you're ready to make a broth whenever you need it.
In the bag of bones, you may add vegetables that turned a bit soft in the fridge, the celery leaves you don't use, parsley stems after using the leaves, green parts of the leeks.....This way your broth is ready to make at any time !