Chicken Stock
Chicken Stock
Created: August 21, 202
- Chicken – meat bones (half a chicken, chicken drums or any pieces of meat with bones).
- Carrots
- Onions
- Peppercorns (don’t use during initial GAPs protocol)
- Filtered water
- 2-3 bay leaves (optional)
- Slow Cooker
- Cutting board
- Knife
Meat stock is delicious and nourishing (when it is home-made). It is full of minerals, vitamins, amino-acids and many other nutrients in a very bio-available form, so it is great in your health improvement process. You can use it as the base to make your soups, gravies or stews. It lasts in the refrigerator for about a week, or it can be frozen for a later use.
Some people think that making their own Chicken Stock is very complicated and time consuming, so they end up buying a commercial version in the store that is labelled “broth”. Many also think that Stock and Broth are the same, but there are several differences between them. Click here to find more about how they are different.
Here is an example on how to make Chicken Stock on your slow cooker:
Make sure you use meat with bones, and not only bones. Put your chicken in the slow cooker. If you make your meat stock with joint bones and you have time, I recommend to find the center of each joint and do a little cut in that area with a sharp knife. These cuts add more nutrients and healing enzymes to the stock. This can also be done easily by pulling the leg or wing out and breaking it back, exposing the joint.
Cut the carrots into edible pieces. If your carrots are organic, you don’ t need to peel them, just wash them properly.
Peel the onions and cut them into mid-size pieces.
Put the carrots and onions inside the slow cooker with the chicken and add filtered water to cover the chicken and veggies by about 1/2 inch.
Add a handful of peppercorns. Peppercorns are important to the stock because they cause the digestive tract to secrete digestive juices, which are important to repair your gut wall. If you use bay leaves, you can add them right now. The peppercorn can be strained out at the end.
In the slow cooker I recommend to cook it for 1 hour on high and 6 hours on low. If you cook the chicken stock in a Dutch oven, cooking time should be between 1.5 to 3 hours. If you don’t cook your stock in a slow cooker, I recommend that you cover it so that it doesn’t evaporate, so you don’t lose a portion of it.
If you have the opportunity, about half way of the cooking time, remove the scum. You can use a spoon or a scum remover.
To add more nutrition to your chicken stock, you can do the following: once the stock is fully done, remove the chicken and let it cool for a few minutes. Remove the bay leaves and scoop out the pepper corns (if used). Add the skin back into the stock pot and mix it with an immersion blender until it is fully combined. On top of adding more nutrition to your stock, this step will make the stock taste like a cream soup.
Once it is finished, you will have a delicious and very nutritious chicken stock. It can be consumed as a clear liquid or with meat blended into it, or as a bowl of soup. You can also serve it with carrots, onions and shredded chicken. Add some salt if desired (Make sure you use a good quality salt).
Alternatively you can use you chicken stock as a base for other type of soups, like cream of carrot or cream of broccoli.
To store your stock, you can put it in mason jars when it is still hot and put the lid on. The heat will make the lead go down while the stock cools down, sealing it tightly. This will keep the stock in the refrigerator for longer.
If you have histamine issues, do not reheat your stock for very long, since it will cook out the healing enzymes that calm the mast cells that cause the histamine issue.
Find more tips to cook Chicken Stock here.