My Homemade Stock – Bone Broth Made SO Easy with Boiling Bags

It was over five years ago when I came out with my first ever food recipe here on the blog which was how I make homemade stock. Well, in the years since, I’ve found some short cuts that have made it SO much easier I had to share them here. First, I keep a gallon size zip lock bag in my freezer to catch all of my vegetable scraps and egg shells. Of course you don’t have to make this with anything else besides chicken but I love that I’m not wasting even egg shells as they’re an awesome source of calcium!

If I’m feeling crummy at all or just after a long day I’ll come home and heat up some of this homemade broth and sip it out of a big coffee mug. It really is the little things that sometimes get us through it and this is one of mine.

One full bag of scraps for me makes two batches of stock so, once its full, its time for me to pick up some poultry. (Around the holidays I’m in charge of the turkey and one turkey carcass makes two batches of really tasty stock that I like even more than chicken.)

Do you need to use a whole chicken? Absolutely not. You can totally use any cut of chicken that you prefer but it needs to be on the bone and with the skin on.

(When I see recipe videos online boil some boneless, skinless, chicken breasts in a gallon of store bought stock… I just die a little.)

At one point I had two dozen chicken wings in my freezer for that one time I got really excited about making them in my air fryer… and my motivation died (lol) so I used them to make stock and it turned out awesome.

Walmart almost always has a sale where if you purchase two birds you get a better deal than just buying one. This time I got them for only $1.32 a pound!

I prefer whole chickens because I get so many meals out of them and I think they make the best stock because its the entire bird including the organs. (I really hope to someday find a local around here that I can buy farm raised chicken from…)

I butcher my birds first by removing the breasts from the bone. Then I take the thighs off leaving them bone in and with the drummies attached. That leaves me with four thighs plus drummies and four chicken breasts to freeze for future meals.

Everything else: the organs, any trimmings, skin, fat, the entire carcass, neck etc. I save it all for this. (Whole birds like these aren’t bred for their wings so I generally just leave them on the carcass for this.)

With these two birds and my veggie scraps I have enough to make two batches of stock which is upwards of five gallons out of what most people would just have thrown away.

(Right now to buy that much Great Value brand chicken broth its nearly $50)

So, it turns out I haven’t been cooking my stock for long enough… I guess to get the absolute most nutritious broth possible you really need to cook it for 6 hours at least. OOF. I was only hitting about 3 which still makes tasty broth but I really want to get the most out of this that I can.

Apparently a really low simmer with the pot covered over a very long time makes a better broth. (It actually does, you can taste the difference.) I started making home made stock probably just like everyone else – by cooking everything together in a big pot and straining it later.

A pain in the butt!

So, I got myself a giant pasta pot with a built in strainer that I put everything in and that improved the situation but excavating the chicken from the vegetable scraps was obnoxious. So then I added another strainer on top of that for all the vegetable scraps. And that helped but it still felt like there had to be a better way and two strainers in one pot took up a lot of room and also added a lot more washing up then felt at all necessary.

The idea started when I picked up these tiny cheesecloth bags for when I wanted to add herbs like rosemary to a dinner that can be unpleasant to bite into a big piece of. It dawned on me that surely they have to make BIGGER bags and of course they do!

So now my chicken goes in one bag, my vegetable scraps go in another and my herbs and seasonings go in one of the little bags which I just pop into my veggie bag.

It works so well you guys and the stock is so much clearer and consistent, no more black pepper settling to the bottom, more getting in one jar then another etc.

Of course you don’t need to add any seasonings to this at all but I always add a tablespoon each of salt, rosemary and black pepper to mine. Its not such a huge amount of flavor that this broth can’t easily transform into any meal you want to use it for later… but it is enough to make it still wonderful just as it is.

I put my full bags in my pot and then fill it with water, add in half a cup of white vinegar, put a lid on it and turn my burner almost to the lowest setting I have. (Yes you could definitely do this in a roaster, crock pot or pressure cooker.)

I check it periodically and smash the bags as it cooks. If I have to keep adding water than I know I have my stove turned up too high. (Ideally I won’t have to add any extra water at all.)

I read somewhere that your stock isn’t done until the bones practically dissolve… at this point I probably need to stop calling this stock and just admit that I’m making a full fledged bone broth.

But isn’t it still technically a bone broth if there were bones in the making of it? Whether you call it bone broth, stock or just broth isn’t it all the same thing?

You do not need to use vinegar but you can’t taste it and everyone says the acidity helps break the bones down. And everyone also suggests using apple cider vinegar but I just use white vinegar because its what I have on hand and I’m pretty sure it makes zero difference.

After at least six hours I wring my baggies out into the stock and then toss the vegetable and seasoning bags. The chicken bag gets set aside to cool.

I’ve burned myself plenty of times at this stage but you don’t want to wait too long or everything becomes much harder to work with. Your stock is going to solidify. The fat is going to get hard and the broth is going to become like jello and that’s how you know you did it right!

I take out all of the bones and separate what’s left into what I deem edible. I’m always pretty amazed at just how much meat I get out of this. I’m not a professional butcher or anything but I work really hard not leave anything behind! But I still generally end up with upwards of two cups of cooked chicken including the organs which just mash up after so much time cooking.

(If you’re not into organ meat that’s just fine but at this point it just tastes like everything else.)

I’ve been freezing in glass for years and have never had a jar break on me. The trick is to fill up your jars to just BELOW the shoulders or even a little under that. We all know water expands when it freezes, so just make sure you leave plenty of room. I also freeze with plastic lids so if I do over fill my jars the lids will give before the glass breaks.

Also, there is absolutely no reason to screw your lids so tight that you can’t get them open later… we’re not canning here we’re freezing!

I fill my jars by just dipping them into the stock pot, filling them up like that as high as I can before carefully pouring them up to their shoulders. Its the onion peels in my veggie scraps that give my broth this rich color.

Pretty consistently my scraps bag is full of egg shells, onion skins, carrot peels, celery ends and the insides, stems and seeds from bell peppers. But when my garden is producing it gets everything I grow lol cucumber ends, pea pods, beat tops, you name it, and that does change the taste (and color) of the broth a bit but its always good even if its bright pink from beat peels!

1 quart is 1/4 of a gallon so this batch gave me 2 and a half gallons of homemade chicken stock. I store it in a combination of wide mouth 1 quart jars and 2 quart jars using mostly plastic lids. Here are the big boiling bags for ¢69 a piece and here are the little cheesecloth bags.

(If you’re concerned on the initial investment. That pot and all of the jars and lids you see me using in the pictures I’ve had for over ten years.)

This may need to cook forever but its only about 15 minutes of actual work in the kitchen and that’s pretty impressive with how much I get out of it.

To sum up: I count the veggie scraps as free and I paid $15.27 for the two whole chickens which makes me upwards of 5 gallons of chicken stock and gives me 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 4 thighs /drummies.

It would be $55.83 to buy that right now from Walmart.

I just saved $40.56!