Jen In The Kitchen: Roasted Chicken + Homemade Chicken Stock
I don’t know about you, but being stuck at home hasn’t really inspired me to cook more. I know it should, but I’ve had a hard time getting motivated. After expending so much energy for work while at the same time, attempting to juggle home schooling the boys, I’m pretty spent by dinner time. But last week, I wanted to make one of my favorite soup recipes, which calls for chicken stock.
I’ve never made homemade stock. Mainly because when I decide to cook something that calls for stock, I don’t want to take the extra step of making it at home. But I thought I could roast some chicken (which I love to do), and then actually utilize the bones.
There are a couple of ways to make stock, but I wanted to keep it simple. First step – roast the chicken (which is yummy and makes the house smell amazing). I would usually roast a whole chicken but the store was all out, so we picked up 2 packs of split chicken (which is simply a whole chicken that’s been cut up into pieces – breast, thigh, wings, drumsticks). After patting the chicken dry, I brushed melted butter all over each piece and gave them a generous seasoning of salt & pepper. I surrounded the chicken with quartered onion, lemon, and fresh thyme.
I put it in the oven (preheated to 400 degrees) for about an hour. It came out so nicely browned and crispy (seriously, the skin tasted so good!).
Once the chicken cooled, I removed the meat from the bone. I diced most of the chicken and divided it up into individual servings and threw the bags of cooked chicken in the freezer. I’ll grab these portions to put on a salad for future lunches (yay for meal prepping). I also shredded some and made chicken salad – YUM!
After removing all the chicken from the bones, I placed them in all in a large stock pot with chopped celery, carrots, and onion. I also added a handful of fresh parsley.
After everything was in the pot, I covered it with water and brought to a boil. Then I reduced the heat and simmered for 4 hours.
The result was like nothing from a box. The color and taste of the stock is so much richer (and more delicious!). It will be hard to ever go back to store-bought stock!
We yielded about 12 cups of stock out of this batch. I used some for my favorite Chicken Tortilla Soup recipe and froze the other two.
Do you have a favorite way to make homemade stock? I’d love to hear from you! Email me at landersj@newdimensionsinc.com and let me know!
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