Recipe: Chicken Stock

Having used the rest of the chicken for chicken parmesan, BBQ and fried gizzards, all you are left with is the scraps. A lot of people just toss the scraps, but if you are trying to use everything, or need to save some money, you have a couple of choices. You can feed the scraps to your cats or dogs, in a raw food diet, or you can cook them for stock. I chose the later, although Marley did get a few scraps.

Stock is easy to make. Just take all your scraps and put them into a big pot. You might want to cut down the back and breasts so that everything fits in there nicely. I like to brown this just a little. You can brown it nicely, but this takes a little work with this much meat, so I just brown what is on the bottom. It gives a little extra flavor to the stock. Now add just enough water to cover everything. Add some veggies. I use celery, carrots, parsnips and onion. You can also add some herbs. I grow oregano and basil, so this is what I use.

Let it boil for an hour or two, stirring occasionally. Run through a strainer, keeping the liquid and tossing the leftovers. You can pick out the veggies and little bits of meat, tossing just the bones. My dog loved the few bits he got. It is a lot of work to pick it out, so most people just toss it, since they would have tossed it had they not made stock from it. Don't give your pets the cooked bones. Raw chicken bones will crunch up nicely, cooked chicken bones shatter and can cut up their innards.