Follow my roasted chicken recipe and you will have an amazing roasted chicken for dinner and then you can make a simple broth from the bones. You can enjoy it hot out of the oven for a Sunday dinner or divide it to prep meals for the week. Either way, that picked-over carcass can make a splendid nutritious staple in your weekly repertoire.
The broth on the stove evokes images of our ancestors nurturing this vital food on the back of Granny’s stove or a steaming cauldron in a cave. It is a staple in most cultures. The broth is limitless as to what you add to it once you have the basics down.
Homemade broth is a nutritious and healing food that is easy to digest and absorb its nutrients. It is rich in vitamins, minerals, collagen, amino acids, and many other compounds that make it a great addition to your meal planning for soups, sauces, or stews. No wonder it is recommended for colds and healing so many conditions.
Collagen is an immune booster. It is great for your digestion and heals the gut lining. The gut-healing capacity is used in a healing protocol for leaky gut or intestinal permeability. It improves our joints, hair, and skin. As we age our skin loses its elasticity and collagen can help reduce wrinkles and tighten skin.
Throw those bones, even with leftover meat on them, fat, cartilage, and any juices into an Instant Pot or right on the stovetop. For the stove method, go slow and low. Use the carcass plus a roughly chopped onion, maybe a few green onions, celery, and carrot, and add two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to leech more minerals from the bones. Cover with water and cook on med-low heat. Skim any impurities, or foam, in the first hour. Throw the pot on the back of the stove on low for 4-8 hrs up to 24 hrs. The longer you cook it, the more nutrients will break down from the bones. And salt to taste.
An Instant Pot can make broth in an hour or two. Put on the meat/broth setting with veggies and use a high-pressure cooker setting. In a few hours, your house will be filled with a delicious aroma that will draw you into the kitchen.
Broths cooked for only a few hours will be lighter in taste and nutrients but can be a good place to start if you have digestive distress. You can also add other ingredients like chicken feet if you really want to increase the gelatin, and nutrients from the marrow, and can handle the weird factor, go for it.
You can use bones from beef, pork, fish or turkey. The base of French Onion Soup or Pho with a delicious meat broth or Pork Tonkatsu Ramen is made of meat broths Turkey makes a very gelatinous broth which is what you want because it will be rich in collagen. Fish broth is tricky because you don’t want to cook it for a long time. I do a half-hour, no longer.
Buy the best quality meats that you can. Conventional meats have tons of hormones and antibiotics that do not get “cooked out”. Unfortunately, you cannot smell or taste these toxins which makes it hard to justify the extra cost but just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t affecting your health.
You can also buy a pre-cooked chicken for dinner and/or meal prep if you need a shortcut. Rotisserie Chickens are now a staple in most grocery stores. Buy two chickens and you can make a large batch of broth and freeze some for that lazy day when you have a loved one who needs some healing chicken soup from the heart.
Kristina Perry NTP CGP 