- 1 pasture-raised organic chicken
- 1T organic grass fed ghee or butter (to coat the chicken before cooking it)
- 1t Himilayan or Celtic Sea Salt
- 2t Black pepper corns
- 1 Onion (or you can substitute Leeks if you like)
- 3 Carrots – coarsely chopped ( I substituted sweet potatoes some of the time)
- 4 Ribs of celery
- 3-4 Garlic cloves (skinned and smashed)
- 1c Vegetable scraps (chard stems, kale stems, rainbow chard stems, carrot tops)
- 2T Raw apple cider vinegar
- 2T Turmeric ground or fresh chopped
- 2-3 Bay leaves
- I like to add 1/2 bunch of parsley and about a 3-4” piece of Pacific Kombu to my broth.
Roast your chicken first for the initial meal. Start by patting your chicken dry. Rub it down with ghee or butter, salt pepper, and any other spices that float your boat. I use rosemary-garlic powder-thyme-oregano. Sometimes I do a lemon, putting it sliced in the cavity, and you can put crushed garlic cloves in there as well. Most of the pastured chickens I get weigh from 3.5 lbs to 4 lbs. I like to cook this weight bird at about 350, as I think they get a bit dry if you cook them any higher. Poultry is done when the internal temperature is 165 degrees.
When your chicken has cooked roughly 1 1/2 hours remove, and slice and have a meal. De-bone the meat that is left on the carcass. (You can collect and freeze bones until you have enough for broth, and don’t forget to use feet or backs for the gelatin/collagen benefits). Any left overs can be frozen or used for chicken salads, etc.
Here is the important part…….Save all of the bones, joints, neck, gizzard (if you didn’t eat it), and place them in the crock pot or Instant Pot (I will talk about this love affair in other places), and the drippings from the pan, along with the above vegetables. You will need approximately 2-3 lbs of bones to make a decent stock, plus two to four chicken feet (they are super high in collagen).
After you put the bones, vegetables, vinegar and seasonings, cover with water. If you have a six quart crock pot, you can fill it almost to the top. Cook the bones on high and covered in your crock pot for the first 4 hours, and then simmer on low for 20-48 hours. Chicken stock can be cooked for 24 hours, but you may want to cook beef/bison/lamb for 48 hours. You may need to add more water if you go 48 hours, and you can uncover the last 4 hours or so if you like a thicker broth. Some people add the garlic and parsley the last hour of cooking their broth, but I could not tell the difference. Get creative–the sky is the limit!
You can use any kind of organic, pasture-raised (and pasture finished/the animal was fed NO GRAINS AT ALL), but beef or other red meat bones taste better when they have been roasted before making the broth. Place raw bones in a roasting pan at 350 for 30 minutes. This will increase the flavor of the broth.
To make bone broth in the Instant Pot…..
- First enjoy the roasted or instant pot cooked chicken for a great dinner!
- Then remove any left-over meat for later dinners (sometimes I freeze this for future fast-food meals).
- Put the bones (including your chicken feet and/or backs, along with all of the rest of the ingredients above) in the Instant Pot and fill to the max-fill line. Do not over-fill as you don’t want gunk inside your steamer valve.
- Set your Instant Pot on the maximum time setting of 120 minutes. I have recently started cooking mine another 120 minutes to extract all of the food-rific goodness in the bones and veggies.
- To do this, just press the “off” button after it beeps at the end of the first cycle, and then immediately turn it back on and set for an additional 120 minutes.
- You can do a slow release (letting the IP cool down on its own), or a quick release, by opening the steamer valve.
Broth can be kept refrigerated for up to a week (keep that healthy layer of fat on the top of the broth as it keeps it fresh and is sooooo good for you). I always freeze my broth, and I will be posting very soon the technique I use to do this.