"Free" Chicken Broth (aka Prep for Soup Day)

Stephanie O'Dea's new Crockpot cooking book has a recipe of sorts tucked in the back for making stock from ‘waste’ vegetable scraps. I can’t compost and I don’t have a pet to feed celery ends to so this seemed like a brilliant idea. Why had I never considered this before? I wanted to get started yesterday. However, I couldn’t get the roommates to acquiesce to a bag of waste veggies in an already full freezer so I had to put it on hold.


The move put me in charge of my own kitchen and I started my big bag of vegetable bits right away. Unfortunately, I didn't do any shopping for the month and a half or so surrounding the move. The only veggies I had on hand were celery and onions. Though my bag filled up quickly, I needed more variety before I was willing to actually try this out.


I got this chance when every manner of soup vegetable and whole chickens went on sale at the same time. I intended to can chicken soup from scratch but I didn’t trust the stock recipe to give me the proper yield. I needed a cheap and easy plan B and this was it. But since I technically wanted chicken stock I needed to modify. Stephanie has another recipe for making chicken stock from a chicken carcass so I grabbed a rotisserie chicken when I bought everything to make my soup and I had what I needed to make greatness happen. Veggie bits, carcass and Crockpot…ready, set, go.


I needed to diversify my scrap bag, make some plan B stock, and save as much time as possible on Soup Day since I knew I would be cooking all day. I decided the best way to accomplish this was to cut up my veggies for the soup the day before I needed. This would also let me make the Plan B stock and let it sit overnight to separate the fat before I had to cook with it.


It occurred to me that since I was using scraps from beginning to end I might save myself a cleanup step if I lined my Crockpot with a square of cheesecloth before I added the ingredients. I had no idea if this would work but it seemed to perfect to pass up. So I set the insert on the counter, lined it with the cheesecloth and got started. And since I dumped things in to the pot as I dismantled them for later projects this recipe is kind of free in regards to time as well as money.


First, I stripped the tasty chicken morsels from the rotisserie chicken and froze those for a quick meal or salad topper later in the month. Then I channeled my inner cave dweller and tore the carcass into pieces and tossed it in the pot.

Dismantled Chicken

Next I dumped in my veggie bits bag from the freezer and piled on more veggies as I chopped them for the soup. I started with more than enough onions and celery before the soup prep and when I was done I had too many veggie bits to close the lid of the pot so I ended up reserving extra scraps for later stock.

Ingredients ready to go

I sprinkled on a few shakes of parsley, basil, and garlic and three bay leaves and covered the mess with 7 c of water. (I filled the pot to the top. It is supposed to cook best at 2/3 full but I always, without fail, fill any Crockpot I use until I can barely close the lid. It takes longer and is less efficient but I do it anyway. It still works and I get more food.) I folded the corners of the cheesecloth over the ingredients, covered it, and set it on High for an hour to jumpstart the process. Then I turned it down to low for 6 or so hours.


When the broth was done I carefully (because everything was hot and wet) balled up the corners of the cheesecloth and used a couple of rubber bands to keep the pseudo-knot tight. I looped this makeshift sieve over a knob on one of my upper kitchen cabinets and let it drain into the stock for about an hour. Every 15 minutes or so I would poke at the bag from the bottom and the sides to rearrange things and I stopped when the bad wasn’t dripping any more. I didn’t squeeze the bag because I have it in the back of my head from making jelly that you don’t squeeze juice bags. When I was done it was magically easy to remove the rubber bands from the cloth and dump the waste in the garbage.

My brilliant cheesecloth idea

I put the lid back on the pot and stuck it in the fridge to cool overnight and in the morning the fat was waiting at the top of the stoneware just begging to be removed. Mostly free ingredients, mostly free time, and easy cleanup. Perfect.

The 4 stages of Stock. Before cooking, after cooking, before chilling, after chilling (not much change)

As far as taste goes…If I had been using only that stock in a soup it would have been way to celery flavored. Since I mixed it in with other stock it was fine. It got mixed into soup and canned with fantastic results. In fact this worked so well that I repeated it the following week and got less strongly celeried results.

Special Equipment: Cheesecloth (optional), 6 qt or larger slow cooker.

Scrap Chicken Broth

(Adapted from More Make It Fast, Cook It Slow, by Stephanie O’Dea, Chicken Broth and Vegetable Stock recipes)

1 chicken carcass

Vegetable scraps, frozen, saved from previous cooking (include onion skins, skip broccoli/cabbage/etc., potatoes, mushrooms.)

3 bay leaves

1 T Italian seasoning (or Parsley, Basil and Garlic Powder)

7 C water

1. Line 6 qt Crockpot with cheesecloth
2. Break chicken carcass into pieces and add to crockpot with vegetables. It is okay if these are still frozen if they are broken up.
3. Cover with water, add spices and stir
4. Fold in cheesecloth, cover and cook on high for 1 hour then on low for 6
5. Use cheesecloth to strain liquid
6. Discard chicken and vegetable scraps and place stock in refrigerator for several hours or over night
7. When cool remove fat from surface of stock
8. Place in containers in the freezer if not using right away.

My Yield:  7.5 c 

Stock Photo!
(Please note the plastic caps on the jars. I planned to use this right away. You need to freeze or pressure can this if you want to keep it for any length of time before you use it.)