My Chicken Stock has Nine Lives

I have been spending a lot of time in the kitchen lately, cooking traditional foods that our ancestors and grandparents cooked, in fats that our grandparents and ancestors cooked with. (Not the same fat, lol).

Well, it has finally turned out to be a good decision for me. I didn't think the chicken stock would ever turn out right. I have made so much of it that didn't really turn out the way I wanted it to. Everything turned around when I started cooking it in a stockpot instead of the crock pot. The crock pot is my favorite way to cook most things. The stock eventually makes its way to the crockpot after it has been strained through a strainer and put in my storage container in the fridge.

One of the things I found out, the first time I cooked the stock in the stock pot was that it gets a lot of the nutrients out of the chicken bones and organ meats that, when refrigerated, turns to gel.

I was good and ready to throw away my container of chicken stock I made when I looked in the refrigerator and found it full of gelatin and no liquid. Where did the stock go? I thought I had done something wrong with it, like not put enough filtered water into the pot with the chicken.

I googled it and found out the gelatin I was looking at was the most important part of the stock. I was so glad I googled that right before I threw it all away. Cooking is a learning process. I am so motivated because I have been doing a lot of reading and following the improvement of my daughter and my own self as well, using the traditional foods and getting away from the processed foods.

Well here is my wonderful discovery. Besides being a wonderful drink that improves digestion, stock can be used for all these following things, for each meal each day:

1. This delicious chicken stock can be used to coat the skillet when cooking gluten free pancakes or scrambled egg yolks for my daughter or eggs for us. I take a tablespoon or more of the liquid for this purpose.
   

2. It can be used as the liquid in a crock pot to cook vegetables in.
   

3. I have to dice up potatoes in very small pieces to make it have the flavor I like. I used about two potatoes after the broth is made and put in the crock pot to cook vegetables in.

   It seems that potatoes are such a favorite in our house but they are not good to consume for our individual dietary needs so much. They tend to be fished out with a slotted spoon and they do not stay in the crockpot long enough for the flavor to combine with the diced carrots and squash.

   Stock combines the tastes of the vegetables so well and these are so much better and delicious than canned carrots and potatoes you can pick up at the store. I do use sea salt in the stock but not a lot.
   

4. I have found that the cats love the stock as a supplement to their normal drinking water. I am careful to not use onions in it because of that. I fry the onions up seperately, and serve with vegetables when I want them, as cats don't need onions in their diet. The human family doesn't like the onions when they are all wilted in the stock either.

   I dilute the stock I give the cats with some filtered water. They drink a lot more than they ever did before and cats are known to be not the best at getting the water they need.
   

5. I have the BEST smelling house. It is the most wonderful experience to walk in the front door and smell cooked chicken and vegetables. It is so awesome. It is also comforting as well.
   

6. When I need to add liquid to a mix, such as the gluten free pancake mix I use, stock is a wonderful substitute for milk or water. Sometimes we are out of the almond milk we use so I have to substitute something and the stock is an excellent substitute. I also use the stock to mix the eggs with before I put them in the skillet. It is awesome the way they taste.
   

7. On freezing days, I put stock out on a table on the patio and the cats have a frozen treat available for them all the time.
   

8. I reuse the bones again, after saving them in the freezer after the first stock is made to make another kind of stock for the kitties. I save the bones from the chicken in an old plastic coffee container and when it is full, in the crock pot the bones go with a little stock and some filtered water and I also put scraps of chicken in the pot as well.

   This cooks for a day and a half or more and soon the bones are soft. That means that the goodness is out of them and into the liquid. I tear the bones apart and spoon out any marrow I can into the liquid in the crock pot. I save this and pour it over chicken scraps for the cats outdoors. They love it. I don't leave it out on hot days but there is nothing left anyway. I have become very popular now that I am dealing with cooked chicken all the time. The cats have it made. The vet said they could have a reasonable amount of boiled chicken. Of course, the dogs get scraps too..
   

9. The stock is an excellent medium to cook the chicken liver in. My family is too grossed out by it so far so the cats get it, but actually liver detoxes the body. It is full of vitamins and wonderful nutrients. I think I read somewhere it might be the most nutrient dense food there is, but due to it's really icky appearance when raw, only the cats and dogs are getting that benefit.

   However, even though I cooked a whole container of chicken livers in a pot of stock and only the animals enjoyed them, I feel they still have a lot to offer. Perhaps they would be better fried in butter, but they look so gross if my family sees them they will never touch them.

I am so proud of the chicken stock and how it has worked in so many wonderful ways. One of them helping me to get off so many cups of coffee a day. I am not really limiting myself, it is just that with each meal, I have 1 cup of Minute Maid orange juice, one cup of almond milk, one cup of filtered water and one cup of stock before I even eat the meal. That leaves very little room for coffee, as much as I love to drink it.

Well I hope I have shared some things that are helpful to someone else who might be interested in cooking their own homeade stock. It has been a really wonderful experience for us. I used to buy the ones at the store but we went through them way, way too fast.