We are big fans of chicken bone stock in this household and we go through a lot of it! If I had to put a number on it, i’d say we probably consume between 30-35 gallons of chicken stock a year. As I break down chickens, I save the back and breast plates and toss them in the freezer. Same with a roasted chicken carcass, wing tips, feet, or any other scraps. Once I have a large supply squirreled away it’s time to whip up a large batch. I do this about every two months or so and pressure can the stock so it stores on the shelf in my basement.
I used to make my stock on the stovetop and would let it simmer away for 24-36 hours to fully develop flavor. I hated the humidity it put into the kitchen, how I had to babysit it for forever, and the space the large pot hogged up on my stove. One day I thought to myself there has to be a better way to do this! Well folks, there is! Enter the pressure cooker. And no, I’m not talking about an Insta Pot (which yeah, you can use those but that’s small volume). I’m talking about a “workhorse 22 quart I can make a lotta food pressure cooker”. This has cut my time down considerably and what used to take a day and a half to develop flavor, now takes two hours! That’s the beauty of a pressure cooker. It does everything in a fraction of the time without sacrificing flavor or nutrition. It’s just as delicious and collagen rich as the stovetop version, so why wouldn’t I do this this way?
The beauty of making chicken stock is it’s really hard to screw up. I personally just eyeball everything with about everything that I do and chicken stock is no different. So if I accidentally add too much water and it’s too diluted, I just let it boil down a bit after to evaporate water and make it more concentrated. If I don’t add enough water and it’s too concentrated, then I just add more water after the fact! My ingredient amounts are pretty fluid, but again i’m an eyeballer.
Ingredients
- Chicken carcasses and bone scraps
- 3-4 large onions cut in half
- 1 celery bunch broken into large pieces
- 2-3 pounds carrots broken into large pieces
- large bunch thyme
- palmful of sea salt
- palmful of whole peppercorns
- cold water
So at this point you may be reading my ingredients and thinking how many chicken bones? How much water? If that’s you shhhhhhh it will be okay. Here is what I do:
I always put my chicken bones in first. I put them in the pressure cooker (and really push them down to squeeze more in) until it’s about 2/3 full. Then I grab my onions and cut them in half skins and all and try and shove them down in any space I can. Don’t peel, dice, or do anything special just cut them in half whole! Then I take my carrots and celery break them up into large pieces with my mitts and push them down on top of the chicken bones. Then top it all off with a bunch of fresh thyme, whole peppercorns, and salt. After all of the ingredients are added, I pour in cold water until it reaches the fill line which on my cooker is approximately 2/3 full. Don’t waste your time cutting veggies into small pieces. Again that’s the beauty of a pressure canner. The flavors will extract when they’re left whole and it will make straining them out a lot easier!
Let's Talk about Salt Baby
Here is my salt disclaimer. First of all, salt is what make flavors pop. Let’s just make that perfectly clear. So chicken stock NEEDS salt. Now, that being said yes it is possible to overdo it. So my word of caution is to add salt (I noted a palmful) while you are pressure cooking the stock. But don’t go crazy because you can always add more later. I tend to do my salting at the end once I have the ideal concentration. I would hate to have to dilute my chicken stock because I added too much salt initially. So again, salt in the beginning but not too much because you can always add it later!
Directions
- After everything has been added to your pressure cooker, you will want to cook it for 1.5- hours at 15 pounds of pressure according to your pressure cookers instructions. I have tested going over the 2 hour mark and didn’t find it to be beneficial. I usually will let mine go for the full two hours to fully extract that flavor.
- Once time is up, turn off the heat source and let the pressure naturally release on its own before opening the lid.
3. One the pressure has released open the top and take it in. The aroma, the color, the beauty! Ladle all of those solids out into a colander over a pot to collect the juices that drip through. Push the solids down to really help extract that delicousness. I bet you’re pretty happy I told you to leave them in big chunks so they’re easier to scoop out huh? You’re welcome.
4. After you have scooped out all of the solids, put a fine mesh strainer over a pot and pour the liquid through. Some people will use cheesecloth here to collect every single little fine chunk. That’s fine. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Totally depends on my mood. Pour the juices you collected from the solids draining through the fine mesh strainer into the pot to combine.
5. Voila! You have chicken stock. Give it a taste. Is it too bland? If so, let it simmer on the stove top and reduce until it has that perfect chickeny flavor and then salt accordingly. Is it just right? Add more salt if needed, if not leave it alone!
6. Once you have it at the perfect flavor you will want to try and skim as much fat off as you can. I love fat, and always end up leaving some in my stock but too much is not good. It give the stock an oily, filmy feeling on your tongue that you just can’t get off. If you let the stock cool down a bit, the fat will rise to the top and allow you to skim it off with a large spoon or turkey baster. Annie loves chicken stock day, she gets all of the fat poured over her supper.
7. Preserve it! Freeze it or can it, it’s your choice. I am a canner, because I like it to have it ready and on hand whenever I need it and don’t want to have to worry about thawing it. Plus, we have four freezers but they are full of meat and that space is valuable. Preserving stock requires it to be pressure canned (can’t do a water bath) but I find it to be well worth the extra effort.
Because we raise our own Ranger chickens, we have no shortage of chicken bones around here. But even if you don’t raise your own birds you can still easily make your own chicken stock at home! Buy a whole chicken at the store and break it down instead of buying everything pre-butchered and boneless. Or, if you get a rotisserie chicken save the carcass! No matter how your source the ingredients, chicken stock is a great way to minimize waste while stretching your dollar and creating a delicious and healthy food.
A few years ago my husband and I began our path down the road to self sufficiency. Being meat eaters, we couldn’t really call ourselves self sufficient without raising our own! So, we decided to get our feet wet and started with meat chickens like most do. Our initial round of birds we raised were the Cornish Cross because well, that’s what everyone raises! So they must be good right? Wrong. Well, wrong for us at least. We couldn’t stand these birds, and after that first round we swore we would never raise them again…and we haven’t. We immediately switched to the Rangers. A robust, slower growing breed that is more adapt for being raised on pasture. We have raised a couple hundred since then, and have been beyond thrilled with the breed overall.
So why the Rangers and not Cornish Cross? Read on!
Cornish Cross
My experience with the Cornish Cross was not a pleasant one. Ultimately, the breed itself just wasn’t right for the environment we raise them in (pasture versus confined) and their obvious genetic selection for certain attributes just didn’t sit well with me. Again, this is my experience. I know plenty of people that happily raise them and plenty of others that have sworn them off just like me. Some key points are:
- They aren’t hardy. The Cornish Cross are a hybrid breed just like the Rangers. However, the breeding stock are chosen for very specific traits such as exaggerated large breasts to meet the high demand of white meat eaters, sparse feathering, wide set legs, extremely fast growth, and foraging suppression. All of these traits are desirable for the large scale poultry farms, which is the industry the breed was tailored for. These traits aren’t natural, and as a result, the bird’s health suffers. Their body is designed to put on an incredible amount of weight in a short amount of time, causing other systems to be compromised. They are notorious for leg issues and organ failure among other health problems. This is why most people don’t raise them past the 8-10 week mark because they physically will not be able to make it. After this point, the mortality rate spikes and you are really taking a gamble on if the birds survive no matter how well you care for them. In addition to health issues, they are very sensitive to extreme temperatures and are not equipped to withstand the elements of inclement weather. All it takes is one short heat wave to completely devastate your flock, I have seen it personally.
- Yes, they grow fast. But I mean man do they grow fast. They have a high feed conversion ratio meaning they very efficiently and quickly convert their feed weight. They do it better than any other breed and is one of the many reasons why they are a favorite of large poultry farms as well as homesteaders.
- They just don’t seem natural. If you’ve ever seen an animal in its live form and thought “man that thing is gross I wouldn’t even want to eat it” that’s how I feel about the Cornish Cross. Their splotchy feathering and exaggerated wide set legs to support their front heavy stature make them look like a science project gone awry. It just isn’t natural. Even worse, we had to prop their food trough up on bricks to raise it so they actually had to stand to eat. Otherwise, they would lay down in front of the food dish, in their own poop, and eat. No matter how much space they had to move and forage, once they reached a couple weeks old these birds would plop themselves in front of the food trough all day long. Overall, they are minimal foragers in comparison to other breeds which for us is a big no no.
Let’s sum them up:
- Pros: do well in confinement setting, reach slaughter weight quickly (as little as 6 weeks), easier to pluck due to sparse feathering, large breasts for white meat lovers, widely available.
- Cons: don’t make good foragers, generally unhealthier and lack of hardiness, don’t display normal chicken behaviors, unhygienic.
Rangers
Since switching to the Rangers we have been extremely happy with their performance. They are a slower growing breed which allows more flavor to impregnate the meat that you just can’t get in a quick growing bird. They are also known for their dark meat, which makes them more desirable if you are a chicken leg lover such as myself. Some key points are:
- The Rangers are very similar to dual purpose laying hens in their appearance and personality. They are fully feathered with their breast meat being proportional to their body unlike a Cornish. They also display normal behaviors such as active foraging, roosting, taking dust baths, etc. Even with a feeder full of grain, they will still opt to forage making them an ideal pastured bird.
- I have raised Rangers in varying temperatures and seasons without issue. They are very hardy and are able to hold up to inclement weather regardless of a heat wave or cold snap without any special accommodations. Because we raise our birds on pasture, this is an absolute necessity without a controlled environment.
- They grow considerably slower than the Cornish Cross. While the average age to process is around the 12-14 week mark, we have never processed our birds that early. We always end up pushing them out further and process between 16-20 weeks, and have dressed weights between 7-8 pounds. There are two schools of thought on this: Some see this as a negative because they want the birds to grow out as fast as possible. Others see this as a good thing because longer growth equates to more flavorful meat. I take the latter point of view, and like the slower growth rate. It allows more time for flavor to develop, but because we process our own birds it also gives us the luxury of processing them on our own time. Unlike the Cornish, the Rangers will not succumb to multiple system failures so they can be processed whenever we get to them whether they’re 10 weeks or 10 months old.
Let’s sum them up:
- Pros: natural foragers reducing feed costs, very hardy, display normal chicken behaviors, more flavorful meat, great for dark meat lovers
- Cons: take longer to reach slaughter weight (if you consider that a con, which I don’t), fully feathered so harder to pluck, smaller breasts than Cornish Cross (again not a con for me, they’re far from “small”!)
Let's Talk About Slow Meat
Everyone is familiar with the notion that you can’t rush quality, and meat chickens are no exception to this rule. Flavor takes time, and it’s a process that can’t be rushed. This is a concept that people are starting to realize with the “slow meat movement” taking its hold.
Is there really a noticeable difference though? Absolutely!!!! Night and day. A big part of the difference in flavor is of course the feed given to the birds as well as supplemental pasture. But, time is a huge part of it as well and is a variable that can’t be rushed. If you raised a Cornish Cross and a Ranger side by side under the same exact conditions and processed them at their respective average slaughter ages, there would be a noticeable difference in the appearance and flavor.
As I previously emphasized, choosing the breed of meat chicken to raise is very much a personal preference based on what is important to you. Maybe you don’t care that the Cornish aren’t foragers because you’re going to raise them in a small pen. Or you live in a hot climate and want to raise them in the summer so you need a hardier animal and decide to go with the Rangers. I know people who raise the Cornish Cross knowing that they will always lose at least 10% of their flock, and they are okay with that, so they order extra anticipating loss. It is a personal choice just like anything else.
We love raising the Rangers because to us, they are how a chicken should be. Natural. They run, scratch through the dirt, chase each other fighting over worms, thrive raised on pasture, and just all around are a robust healthy bird. Sure it takes longer for them to grow, but it’s a non issue because the result is incredibly nutrient dense delicious chicken for us! But, as they say the proof is in the pudding! See for yourself as I teach you how to break down a whole chicken. You just can’t get that dark red meat and healthy yellow fat from a fast growing sedentary bird.