Depends on what I'm doing.

If I roast a chicken, I pull off all the "good" meat for sandwiches / tacos / tamales, and either freeze or use the carcass right away for stock.

If I'm making pho/ ramen broth, I use the whole chicken for the broth, and then pull off the meat for use in the soup. I tend to use really small chickens for this, so there's not much left at the end, but I'll still freeze the bones as a supplement when I make stock.

Anonymous wrote:I roast a chicken, we eat the meat, I save the bones in the freezer. When we have 2-3 saved up, I throw the bones in the crockpot with an onion, some celery, carrots, garlic, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Cook on low for 24 hours. Strain everything out.

That's what we do, but we leave the carrot out, sometimes they can make the stock bitter. They can be added in later, in the actual soup, if desired.

Anonymous wrote:I roast a chicken, we eat the meat, I save the bones in the freezer. When we have 2-3 saved up, I throw the bones in the crockpot with an onion, some celery, carrots, garlic, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Cook on low for 24 hours. Strain everything out.

Thanks so much for the 24 hr crockpot suggestion! I've always done what you indicated, except I cooked in a pot on stove for a few hours. I'm going to give the crockpot a try!

Anonymous wrote:I buy low sodium chicken stock at the grocery store.

Pacific, perhaps?

I roast a chicken, we eat the meat, I save the bones in the freezer. When we have 2-3 saved up, I throw the bones in the crockpot with an onion, some celery, carrots, garlic, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Cook on low for 24 hours. Strain everything out.

I buy low sodium chicken stock at the grocery store.

I boil a soup chicken (kosher) gently for three hours with soup greens. I then strain it and toss all of the veggies and chicken (it's got no flavor left) and I'm left with a beautiful clear broth.

I just made chicken noodle soup today. I put the whole chicken in to make the stock and used the chicken for the soup. The chicken came out fine, but I left the skin on while I was making the stock, and it came out kind of greasy. Which isn't bad, but kind of weird in chicken noodle soup.
Usually I make stock after we eat a roasted chicken. I just throw the bones in the crockpot after dinner with some water and veggies and strain it in the morning.

Do you roast the backs, or just toss them into the pot raw and boil them?

I will often buy chicken backs for stock - they are super cheap, make great stock (lots of bone and fat), and then I don't waste the meat. You need a lot of bones to make a decent amount of flavorful stock if you are just using roasted chicken carcasses.

I save carcasses, bones, and those gelatinous drippings from multiple roast chickens, in a ziploc in the freezer. When it's full, I make stock.

When I first started out, I followed a recipe that said to boil a whole raw chicken. It was OK, but a lot of work getting the meat off afterward, and then that meat wasn't good for much--the flavor had been boiled out of it. There are only so many chicken enchiladas you can make.

Years later, having read Anthony Bourdain's cookbook, I see that whole-chicken method is only used if you want a white stock--no color at all. Which is never for me. So I stick to the roasted carcasses.

We usually roast a chicken to eat roast chicken. Then we remove most of any remaining meat and throw the carcass in the freezer and make stock from it at some later point. We're not too careful about taking all the meat scraps off because they make a richer stock.

We like to let ours cook far longer than you would want to eat the meat afterwards.

I cut the meat off of a chicken to make chicken salad and chicken sandwiches and then throw the bones with the leftover meat on it and the skin into the stock pot.

Yes it is a little wasteful but my in laws only really like chicken salads and chicken sliced up and I am not going to complain about it.

I will eat the meat and then put bones with onion in the crock pot and cover with water. I strain it after hours and then. Freeze.

Do you roast the chicken and pull off the meat you want to use, then make your stock from the bones with a little meat left on? Or do you use the whole chicken to make your stock and use the hockey after the stock is done? I have done it the first way, but am new to making stocks. I let mine cook all day the first way, certainly couldn't cook it too long the second way. Thanks DCUM!