One of my favorite things to make with my crock pot is chicken stock. The best thing about homemade chicken stock is that the cost is negligible, since it’s basically made from leftover scraps, yet it’s always more flavorful than canned chicken broth.
I used to think that the words stock and broth were interchangeable, but recently I found that I was wrong. Stock is made from mostly bones whereas broth is made from mostly meat.
Since I had roasted two chickens earlier in the week, I had two bony carcasses to make the base of a good stock. To that I added a bit of garbage– the leafy parts of a celery and some carrot peelings. Usually I’ll add some onion peels, but this time I didn’t have any onions on hand.
When making stock I usually go for organic vegetables, especially for celery. I’ve read that celery has some of the highest concentrations of pesticide residue, you definitely don’t want that in your stock. And I should probably mention that you should wash your veggies thoroughly before adding them to the stock.
After you have your chicken bones and veggie garbage in the crock pot, add water, just enough so that everything’s covered. Add whatever herbs you enjoy, I usually add some Italian herb mix, then add salt to taste. It’s best to err on the bland side, since you can always add more salt later. Then set the crock pot to low and take a nice long nap. I usually set it overnight, but a good 4 or 5 hours is good enough.
The last step is to strain the contents of the crock pot. The easy way to do this is to have a colander that fits across a big pot, then just pour directly through the colander into the pot. The end result is a pot full of flavorful stock, which makes the base for a good hearty soup.
