NO-CARB CHICKEN BROTH
Bones and scraps from roasted chicken *
Water
Salt and pepper, to taste

Place the bones and scraps in a very large pot. Add water to cover, but not so deep that it might boil over. Sprinkle liberally with salt and a little pepper. Bring to a boil; turn the heat to lowest setting, cover and simmer about 3 hours. Watch closely while bringing to a boil because it can easily boil over. The cooking time does not need to be exact, but it's good to cook it long enough to extract the natural gelatin from the bones for a richer broth.

When the cooking time is up, use a large slotted spoon to scoop out the largest bones. Strain the liquid through a fine strainer into a suitably-sized pot or heat-proof container. Refrigerate overnight or at least several hours until any excess fat has risen to the surface and can be skimmed off and discarded. If the broth was cooked long enough, it should look almost like "Jell-O" when cold. Divide amongst 1 and 2-cup plastic containers. Label, date and freeze for use in recipes. Thaw in the refrigerator before using. If using for soups, you can often add it still frozen, depending on the recipe.

Number of servings will vary
Can be frozen

* Be sure to put in all the scraps from your roasted chicken. That includes any little bits of meat and skin. The more you add to the pot, the more flavor you'll end up with in your broth.

I prefer to make my broth plain, with no vegetables added, for a pure chicken flavor. I figure that I can always add those things later when I use the broth in a recipe. Plain chicken broth makes a good, neutral base for a lot of dishes and sauces.

Another, easy way to get a nice broth is to cook a whole chicken or chicken parts in a slow cooker (see my Chicken in a Crock Pot recipe). I don't add any water to the cooker because the chicken will give off enough liquid as it cooks. After removing the meat, I strain the remaining liquid and freeze as directed above. This will make a very rich broth since no extra liquid was added. Be careful with seasoning later when you use this in a recipe as it will be saltier than regular broth.

Another thing I do sometimes, is collect any bones from roasted chicken and store them in a big ziploc bag in the freezer until I have enough to make a big pot of broth. Since this can be a messy job, I'd rather do a large batch once than to have to make broth each time I cook chicken. Any way you make this, it will be a hundred times more flavorful than the stuff that comes in cans. Once you've tasted homemade broth you'll realize that canned broth has almost no flavor at all.


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