Crock Pot Chicken Stock

We all have busy lives and we try our best to find a balance between controlling what’s in your food and buying that quick fix from the grocery store. Look no further! Dust out that crock pot we all know you probably haven’t used since the chili cook off this spring and put some of those leftovers to test. A simple kitchen trick is to keep leftover scraps of raw chicken or chicken that has been hanging out in your freezer and either needs to pay rent or kick rocks!

Any time I butcher a chicken for any recipe, I keep the left over carcass and any chicken left behind in a zip lock bag and I store in the freezer for my crock pot chicken stock. I also do this with veggies as well to make veggie stock, but that’s a different blog post. I take the left over veggies from prepping a meal and if I know I’m not going to use them for the rest of the week I’ll pop them in a ziplock bag and keep them in the freezer on standby.

I like to either make this stock first thing in the morning so it’s done by the time my day is over, because ain’t nobody got time to sit and watch a stockpot full of chicken. Or, I like to do this before I go to bed and in the morning the house is filled with the aroma of that delicious chicken stock. 🎶The best part of waking up is chicken stock in your crock pot🎶 Sometimes I forget I am making chicken stock and I’ll walk through the door and smell the goodness and think “Did Scott surprise me and make me dinner?” Then I am absolutely surprised when I realize that it is just my crock pot and now I’m hungry.

Here’s what you’ll need:

At least 3 pounds of chicken; you can use a whole chicken from the store or the pieces you’ve been keeping in the freezer (today I used a mix of a couple chicken carcasses and some boneless chicken thighs I had in the freezer along with one bone in chicken breast I had in the freezer as well)

1 carrot

1/2 large onion

1 celery stalk

Whole garlic cut horizontally

A few sprigs of fresh thyme (you can use dry as well)

A small bundle of parsley

2-3 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon whole peppercorns

Water

Special tools:

Crock-Pot 6.5-Qt. iStir Automatic Stirring Slow Cooker with istir attachment removed

Throw everything in the crockpot and fill almost to the top with water. Today I used about 8 cups of water. Set the crockpot to low and timer to 8 hours.

Once it’s done, discard all the large piece to your compost (or trash if you’re environmentally irresponsible…no judgement). Strain liquid through a fine mesh strainer to remove any solids from the stock. Sometimes I do it twice just so I have a nice clean stock. Store in a sealable container in the fridge overnight. The next morning skim any fats or solids from the top of the stock and you can store in the freezer for a month or if kept in the fridge, use it within the next 3 days. I save my old spaghetti sauce jars to reuse for stock so after I’m done straining it, I’ll funnel the stock into these jars. If I am freezing them, I’ll leave enough room for the liquid to expand while freezing. This time, I knew I was going to use the chicken stock later in the week for risotto and soup. This batch filled three 24 ounce jars.