The Right Stuff

My sick boy wanted chicken broth for lunch.  He's not very hungry right now.  I thought I would make it quick so I grabbed my emergency ration of store bought organic free range chicken broth off the shelf.  The real stuff was frozen in the freezer.  I got it all warmed up in the pan.  Then I decided to taste it.  Yuck!  It tasted like water.  Literally.  I called Sean in to taste it.  I asked him what it tasted like.  He said, "Water!".

We looked at the ingredients.  It read, Organic chicken broth....Okay so the first ingredient is actually chicken broth.  Or is it?  We went to read the rest of the ingredients.  After the "first" ingredient in parentheses it read (filtered water, organic chicken)....Now I know in order to make chicken broth you have to use water but I guarantee there was more water in there than chicken.  To make it worse, this was the low sodium kind so there wasn't even enough salt in it to even make it taste better.

Needless to say, I got in the freezer and now the frozen homemade broth is sitting in a sink full of hot water thawing out.  I am not feeding my sick boy that...  It has no flavor what so ever plus I don't know what I was thinking anyway.  The homemade stuff is much better for him.

Now for a little cooking lesson:

It is so easy to make your own healthy chicken broth.  All you do its take the left over carcases of two chickens or one whole organic chicken.  Add three quarts of water, onion, 2 carrots, celery, 2 Tbls. of apple cider vinegar.  Let it set for 30 min to an hour.  Then bring it to a boil.  Lower to simmer for 6-12 hours.  The longer it simmers the better the broth.  As it simmers at first remove any scum that comes to the top.  When it is done strain it into a bowl and refrigerate it until it cools and the fat comes to the top, then you just scoop the fat of, put the broth in glass jars and freeze it.  Best tasting broth you will ever have.  Oh I almost forgot.  If you use a whole chicken, don't forget to pick all the chicken out of the bones.

Nothing goes to waste either.  I have figured out that from cooking so long all the bones from the chicken have gotten so soft that you can squish them.  So I take all the scraps(bones, skin, veggies) that were strained out and put them in my Vitamix and puree them into what we have affectionately come to call, "puppy pate'".  We save this back and add it to our dogs dried dog food for extra nutrients.  She loves it.

That's it.  I hope you all enjoy making your own broth and stop buying that horrible store bought stuff.