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–+ servings
Chicken stock in a pot with onions, carrots, and herbs
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Customizable Homemade Chicken Stock Recipe

Homemade stock is easy to make, delicious, and nourishing and it's a great way to use leftover bones and vegetable scraps and aromatics. This recipe is customizable so you can use what you have at home.
Course Soup
Cuisine American
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Servings 8 cups
Author Bessie Bakes

Equipment

  • Large Stock Pot
  • Or use an Instant Pot to speed up cooking time
  • Or a Crock Pot to safely cook it all day or overnight without having to watch it

Ingredients

  • 1 Chicken carcass from one whole chicken
  • filtered water the amount will differ based on the size of your pot
  • 3 whole carrots cut into thirds, keep skins on
  • 2 small onions or 1 large one, quartered with skins on
  • 5 garlic cloves crushed with skins on
  • 2 sprigs fresh rosemary kept whole
  • fresh thyme sprigs 4-7 sprigs kept whole
  • 1 tsp whole peppercorns

See ingredient substitutions in the recipe notes below

    Instructions

    Cooking stock on the stove top

    • Add the chicken carcass and any other wings or thigh bones you have, carrots, crushed garlic with skins, quartered onions with skins, fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, whole peppercorns to a large stock pot.
    • Add filtered water (if possible) to just below the top of the pan, leaving a little room at the top so it doesn't boil over.
    • Place on the stove top on medium-high heat and partially cover with a lid to allow the water to come to a gentle simmer.
    • Once it comes to a simmer lower the heat to low and keep the pot partially covered.
    • Simmer for as little as 3 hours or up to 8 hours for best flavor in your stock.

    If you simmer for more than 3 hours

    • If you simmer for more than 3 hours, you may need to skim the surface of the foam that rises to the top a couple of times. You can use a hand-held sifter to catch the foam easily. You can also use a spoon if you don't have a hand-held sifter.
    • If the water level lowers due to simmering, add some more water while it's simmering.

    Storing the stock

    • Strain the bones and ingredients from the pot.
    • You can pour the stock into mason jars if you have them. I like using a tea strainer when pouring in the stock to strain out any solids from the liquid.
      Use the stock within 3 days of refrigerating.

    Freezing the stock

    • Freeze in mason jars but make sure to let the broth cool down before freezing.  Also leave an inch of empty space at the top of the jar to allow for expansion, otherwise the glass jar could crack in the freezer.
      Or you can freeze your broth into ice cubes so you'll have smaller servings to thaw when you need it.  Once the cubes are frozen, remove them from the ice cube tray and store in a container or freezer bag.
      This takes up less space in your freezer and when you are ready to use it, you can thaw only a small portion of broth at once.

    Instant Pot instructions (the panel buttons may vary based on your model)

    • Add the chicken bones and all other ingredients to the pot. Fill the pot with filtered water all the way up to the fill line, and no more.
    • Place the lid on and turn to secure it. Make sure it's sealed. Flip the knob towards "sealing" to seal in the pressure.
    • Press "pressure cook".  Turn the time to 2 hours or 120 minutes.  The instant pot should say "on" at this point.  This means that the pot is heating up and pressurizing.  This should take about 30 minutes.  Once the instant pot is up to temperature, it will start timing the 2-hour pressure cooking, so you will know how long this will take.
    • Once the instant pot is done with the cooking process, the heat will turn off.  At this point, you will need to release the pressure from the pot.  However, I do NOT recommend releasing the pressure manually from the pressure knob.  Instead, allow the pressure to release naturally, which takes 10-25 minutes, but will keep steam/broth from shooting all over your ceiling!
    • When the silver knob drops next to the knob, the pressure has released.  Remove the lid and strain out all of the ingredients.

    Slow Cooker Instructions

    • Add the chicken carcass and additional ingredients to the crock pot. Pour in enough water to almost the top of the pot.
    • Secure the lid on the crock pot and set the cooking time to low heat for 8 hours or high heat for 4 hours.
    • Remove the lid and skim the foam from the surface with a handheld flour sifter or a spoon.

    Notes

    Swap out ingredients:

    If you don't have onions you can use:
    • 3-5 whole shallots cut in half with skins on.
    • A bundle of green onions.  Use the entire thing in the pot.
    If you don't have fresh rosemary or thyme:
    • Fresh parsley  (you can also use all three if you have these on hand).
    Use vegetable scraps in your broth
    • Keep your onion skins, garlic skins, and carrot skins from previous uses and freeze them in a container.  Add the extra vegetable scraps to the pot for extra flavor.
    Extra add-ons for more bold flavor
    • Lemongrass stalk
    • Large slice of fresh ginger