Which Came first? the Chicken (Stock) or the Egg?

Well, after the votes were tallied, it looks like you Mutineers want to know about the Chicken! So the chicken is coming first!


Let's get started on how to turn a $7.50 whole chicken into 6 meals and 11 Quarts of stock!

you will need:

- a whole chicken. Preferably already culled, otherwise there are extra steps you'll need to take. That will be a later post. So for this time, let's assume you have purchased a whole chicken from the butcher or grocery store
-some carrots
-onion
-couple cloves of garlic
-Shot of apple cider vinegar
-crockpot
-water
-pressure canner and jars/lids/rings OR freezer safe containers and freezer space



First thing you'll want to do,  is get your crockpot out and ready to go. I do everything in the crockpot. This pot will be kept going for 3-5 days. YES! Really, so if you haven't gotten over leaving your crockpot on while you are gone, GET OVER IT! That's what they are made to do! Unless you have faulty wiring, then that's a whole other issue!

The next thing we are going to do, is get that chicken ready!

As you can see from the photo, I really and truly bought a whole, organic chicken for $7.50.  Shop around, look around, you might be surprised where you will find cheap food! I will say, that because this is an organic, antibiotic and hormone free chicken, it seemed "small" compared to the super huge fattened up chickens we are used to seeing. FEAR NOT, Me Hearties! You will still get a TON out of this one chicken!

So, stand him up on one end. I like to keep the "big" side down, so the leg bones are at the top, where the packaging is smaller. I cut just a small opening into that bag. There's a lot of liquid in the bag, and you don't want that running all over the place. You don't want salmonella to ruin your stock party!

While you still only that that small opening in the bag, you'll want to reach inside the chicken and grab the bag of giblets. Don't throw them away, we're going to use them! Clip them out of their separate packaging and put them into the crockpot, along with the whole chicken. Nothing fancy, just dump them all in there!

There may or may not be one of those little paper pads in there. be sure to pull that out if there is!

Once you have your chicken in the pot, and have cleaned up your work surface from any dribbles, you'll want to add your veggies. I peel the onion and garlic, and don't even bother chopping the carrots. I just plop them all on top of the chicken in the pot. And then put that shot of apple cider vinegar on top. This helps to pull the minerals/nutrients out of the bones!

Once you have your chicken, giblets, and veggies in the pot, go ahead and cover it with water, and turn the crockpot onto the lowest setting.

After 12 hours, it will look something like this:

Go ahead and get a platter and remove the chicken. leave the veggies in there, and leave the liquid.
Let the chicken cool enough to the touch to pull the meat off it and set aside for meals (I got 6 total meals from this chicken. It was 2 full meals for the three of us!!!). Once you have a pile of bones and a pile of meat, dump the bones back into the crockpot! This is the key to making your good stock!

Add some more water to make sure the pot is full if need be. Let it go another 12 hours.

At the end of the 24 hours, you can strain off HALF of the pot. Don't drain it more than half way! You want to leave some of the stock there to flavor the new batch. You can fill your jars with the strained stock (I use a laddle and a fine mesh strainer to do this.) and once cooled, you can put them into the fridge.

Top off with fresh water, and let go another 24 hours.

Repeat this process of removing liquid and adding water every 24 hours. You want your stock to be a nice dark amber color like this:

depending on the particular chicken, I usually keep this going for 3-5 days. Once the bones of the chicken just smoosh and crumble between my thumb and index finger with little pressure, and the stock color lightens up, I call it a day.

If you are going to pressure can the stock, then this is the time to take your jars out of the fridge and can them.
If you are going to keep it in the freezer, then you can just pop those containers right into the freezer instead of the fridge!

Please note- that I do NOT add salt at any point in this process. Reason being, is that I would much rather add it when I am cooking and adjust the salt to the recipe I am making, rather than have to adjust my recipe to the salt already in my stock!

Enjoy! And Happy Sailing!!!!!