Chicken broth is easy and relatively inexpensive to purchase at the store, but making your own is also really simple and uses basic ingredients. Homemade Chicken Broth has extra rich flavor, and one of the benefits is that you can control things like flavor notes and salt content. My method here uses something that is normally discarded- a leftover rotisserie chicken! After you use the meat on the chicken for a meal, instead of tossing the remaining bones and scraps, simmer them with a few more ingredients and it results in a delicious homemade broth. I’m including instructions to make this both on the stove top or in a pressure cooker. If both options are available to you, I strongly recommend the pressure cooker. It will result in a more flavorful and less cloudy broth, and it cooks fast, too!
Ingredients Needed
You really only need basic ingredients to make great broth at home and it’s incredibly flexible. I don’t even always measure the vegetables. It’s also fine if your veggies are just barely starting to go bad. Instead of tossing them out, toss them in the pot!
- Chicken stock bones – This recipe calls for the leftover meat, cartilage, and bones of a rotisserie chicken. You can make broth with a chicken that is mostly picked apart, or one that still has quite a bit of meat on it. This is a great use for a chicken that still has meat on it, but it’s perhaps been in the fridge for a couple days and you no longer want to just eat it plain. You could also use leftovers from any cooked, bone-in chicken or simply use whole, raw drumsticks, or bone-in thighs or chicken breasts.
- Celery
- Carrots – Regular or baby carrots work great.
- Onion – I prefer yellow or white onion. Red will also work, but it may turn your broth a murky color.
- Fresh garlic
- Peppercorns – Peppercorns add flavor but can also be strained out at the end. If you don’t have whole peppercorns and don’t mind pepper flakes in your finished broth, feel free to crack some black pepper into the pot.
- Kosher salt
- Herbs – As desired. Fresh herbs are wonderful, but you could also used dried. Feel free to add different herbs to taste, it’s very flexible!
How to Make Easy Homemade Chicken Broth
- Pull off any large pieces of fat and skin from the chicken and discard. Place the carcass in a pressure cooker (or stove top pot).
- Add carrots, celery, onion, garlic, salt and peppercorns.
- Add water.
- In a pressure cooker, I cook on high for 45 minutes and then let it naturally depressurize. On the stovetop you’ll want to simmer, covered, for at least an hour. The longer you cook it the more flavorful it will be, but it will also reduce. Feel free to add more water if needed to make sure all ingredients are covered.
- When it’s done, strain your liquid to remove the solids. I like to use a large-hole strainer to discard the chicken bones and vegetables, and then run it through a fine-mesh strainer to further remove solids. You don’t need to remove all solids if you don’t want to, they usually just add flavor and body to your finished dishes!
- Use or freeze to enjoy later.
Storing and Other Tips
- Store finished, cooled broth in an airtight container in the refrigerator and use within 3-4 days for best results.
Freezing Homemade Broth
- Food service containers are a great way to freeze broth. I put a piece of masking tape on it and label with the contents and date.
- Another favorite tool for frozen broth are my favorite Souper Cubes, which make it easy to freeze portioned amounts. I freeze into cubes and then transfer the cubes into Ziplock bags, an airtight container, or a vacuum sealed bag for longer term storage.
- To Defrost: Place containers of broth in the fridge a day ahead of time to thaw, or I add the frozen cubes directly into warm pots of soups and sauces to melt.
Frequently Asked Questions
I use this Chicken and Dumplings recipe- just omit the dumplings, add noodles, and replace the milk with broth.
The quick answer is that both broth and stock involve simmering water and vegetables with parts of a chicken. Generally broth is made with chicken meat, like a whole chicken while stock is made with a large quantity of bones. Often in stock, the bones are roasted first as well. Overall, stock is known for having a deeper, richer flavor. Because the bones contain a lot of gelatin, stock usually has a little more body. I think this is true for homemade restaurant quality stock, but when it comes to the store-bought options, there’s not a huge difference (in my opinion). Some companies aren’t even consistent in labeling. So are they interchangeable in recipes? Generally speaking, yes. I buy broth 100% of the time. It’s more widely available and I like the light, clean flavor. The recipe above does contain bones, but it’s mostly the meaty chicken scraps attached that gives the broth its flavor.
You can, if you have a good quantity of leftover meaty bones. Beef broth requires a higher meat/bones to water ratio than chicken. Beef broth will need to cook longer and you may want to replace some of the herbs with a bay leaf. Beef contains more fat as well, so you will need to skim that off as well.
Easy Homemade Chicken Broth
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 rotisserie chicken leftover scraps
- 2-3 ribs celery you can leave the leaves on
- 2 carrots or a handful of baby carrots
- 1 onion, medium
- 3 cloves garlic smashed or roughly chopped
- 10 peppercorns
- 1 heaping tablespoon kosher salt
- fresh herbs a few fresh sprigs of parsley, thyme, and a bay leaf. Rosemary and sage are also good. You can also use 2 teaspoons each of rosemary, parsley, and thyme.
Instructions
Preperation
- Trim any excess fat and skin off of chicken and place it in a pressure cooker or stock pot.
- Give the celery, carrots and onions a rough chop and add to pot. Add all remaining ingredients.
- Add water so it covers the ingredients by a couple inches. If using a pressure cooker, do not exceed the max fill line. In my pressure cooker, I add about 12 cups of water. In a stock pot, I generally add 12-16 cups.
Cook Broth
- Pressure Cooker: Cook at high pressure for 45 minutes and then do a natural release.
- Stove Top: Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Simmer covered, stirring occasionally for 1-2 hours.
- Strain mixture to remove solids. Cool broth to room temp and then store in portioned containers in the freezer for up to 3 months, or in the fridge for about 5 days. Quantity varies, but it will reduce in volume after simmering.
Notes
- Store finished, cooled broth in an airtight container in the refrigerator and use within 3-4 days for best results.
Freezing Homemade Broth
- Food service containers are a great way to freeze broth. I put a piece of masking tape on it and label with the contents and date.
- Another favorite tool for frozen broth are my favorite Souper Cubes, which make it easy to freeze portioned amounts. I freeze into cubes and then transfer the cubes into Ziplock bags, an airtight container, or a vacuum sealed bag for longer term storage.
- To Defrost: Place containers of broth in the fridge a day ahead of time to thaw, or I add the frozen cubes directly into warm pots of soups and sauces to melt.
Questions & Reviews
Even if I’m just trimming chicken breasts for the freezer I throw the trimmings in a little bag and freeze that as well. Same with onion trimmings. And the carcass, lol! One thing nice about making your own broth is that you can control the salt content, which is very very high in canned broth and stock. Chicken broth in the freezer is like, well, money in the bank!
You can have all that nice moist healthy white meat . . giver me the wings, that is what disappears when I am driving home.
Have you tried the Kirkland Chicken Stock? It is lower in sodium and has lots of flavors that I LOVE.
I often re-roast the carcass of chickens and turkeys with water in the bottom of the sealed up pan until it is very browned then dumb it all into the pot. Makes richer broth that can stretch farther.
THANK YOU!!! I always leave the “carcass” (ugh) in the fridge with good intentions of doing this and have never known how, so my husband always throws it away! Now I can do this!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!
I did this last week, only with a couple of Sam’s Club chickens 🙂 I didn’t even throw in any veggies and it made a very flavorful broth. Oh, and make sure you pick off all the remaining meat. I got a ton to use for soup.
Thanks for the recipe! I also make homemade chicken broth in the crock pot. I cook a whole chicken in the crock pot all day, remove it to pull off the meat and then put everything back in the cooking juices. Then I add ingredients as you suggested along with approximately 6 cups of water. Cook all night on low, place in fridge in morning for a couple of hours so you can skim the fat off the top. Then, the best part, I freeze in a muffin tin so that I have 1/4 cup broth cubes and can throw them in recipes during the week. I like to make our brown rice with it instead of water.
Love this idea especially totally get the carcass mess at the end and love the idea of actually using it. Love the cookbook. Totally obsessed with it.
I have thrown all of the ingredients into a crock pot and just let ‘er rip for several hours without having to watch it. Then I pull the insert out of the pot and refrigerate it and throw away the fat that floats to the top and solidifies.
Thank you! I was just thinking that I’m relying too heavily on canned (okay, those cardboard-like carton thingees) of broth and I should make my own. Sometimes. Maybe.
I need to admit that not chopping the vegetables was a revelation. Every Thanksgiving, my mother in law stops us from throwing out the carcass, saying we should make broth, and every year we end up tossing it out a few days later. But tossing it in a pot with some scrubbed, whole vegetables and a handful of seasonings? I can totally handle that. Great post, thanks.
(I also love the fauxtisserie/overnight broth suggestion. Brilliant!)
Using the Costco chicken is a great idea!! I was with my Sister in law at Costco in Orem, UT on saturday and we searched for your amazing cook-books and we bought 8 of them!!!! She’s giving them to all her friends at book club and I am giving them to my sisters!!!! Thanks so much!!!