Let me say right now that I think bone broth is the easiest, most delicious, and most cost-effective way of improving and maintaining health; it is true kitchen alchemy, the power of the hearth at work. I’m going to write soon about that power in more detail, but for today I’ll just focus on another method of creating the liquid gold (ways to use the stock, other than making soup, will be coming soon).

In “Chapter 1,” I made stock in a pot on my stove, cooking the chicken with the stock for the entire time. Awesome stock, bland chicken, lol. This time I roasted the chicken first, harvested the meat, and then made the stock from the carcass, all done in a crock pot. I’ve read that this method is supposed to be “easier” than stovetop stock, but to me it was pretty much the same, although I realized I was a bit less concerned about leaving the crock on all night as opposed to a simmering pot on the stove. However, this new method did raise new questions.

Here’s the basic outline of what I did:

1. Rinse chicken, pat dry, plop into crock (I put it breast-down to help “juice-en up” the white meat).
2. Added some halved garlic cloves.
3. Put on lid, turn crock on low, cook for 8ish hours.
4. When done, take off/out all meat, leave bones in crock along with juices (I didn’t remove the carcass, just picked it over while still in the crock).
5. Add water to bones & juices.
6. Add couple of tablespoons of raw vinegar (the vinegar helps get all the minerals out of the bones), re-cover, then let sit for an hour.
7. Turn crock to high.
8. After rolling “boil”/cook is going, turn to low.
9. Simmer for 24 hours.
10. About 6ish hours from done, I added carrots & onions (only veggies I had on hand to add).
11. When done, I strained everything from the stock, and let the stock cool.
12. Once cooled, I put it in the fridge to cool more overnight and to let the fat rise.
13. The next day, skim off the solidified fat and transfer the stock to jars for freezing.

Ok, so that was the basic process. Here are the questions I came up against:

• When doing stock in a stovetop pot, with a whole chicken, you add enough water to cover the chicken. I have not yet measured exactly how much that is. When I did the crock pot stock, by the time I added water to it the carcass was a pile of unconnected bones sitting in juices—I had *no* idea how much water to add, so I winged it. Silly me didn’t measure this time, either, but by the end I definitely had less stock than when I made it on the stovetop. I think this means the stock I have is more “concentrated” than before?
• The bones/juices were warm (obviously) when I added the vinegar to them, and they sat warm(ish) yet cooling for the hour while the vinegar did its thing. Does it matter that it was warm?
• The stock never boiled enough to create “scum” on top to skim off; does this matter?

Yep, I’m probably the most analytical cook in the history of hearth-tenders. I think it’s fallout from all the “food safety” claptrap that corporate powers-that-be try to pummel into our psyche; not that food safety is bad, but fear of food is, which is what their “food safety” is all about: fear. They want us afraid so that we buy their processed/drugged/cloned/irradiated “food.” I refuse to buy it, so that means learning all the ins and outs of cooking my own food…but I find that their planted fears linger, urging me to worry over this little detail or that little detail, concerned that I might overlook one little thing that could sicken me. I know I’m working to regain my natural instincts about food and nourishment, and that regaining those instincts will take time. Each success makes me feel one step closer, and even though I end up with a passel of questions with each success, I try to remember that it’s a part of the process. The fears will pass, and my long-unused kitchen instincts will grow.

As for the chicken this time around, cooking it first was a nice step in that it made it ready to eat much more quickly, but I still cooked it a bit too long and it was a tad drier than I want. It wasn’t nearly as dry as it was the other time I made stock, but it was still not perfectly juicy (although it did fall right off the bone again). I suspect this is because I’m using a pretty small bird yet using larger-bird cooking times. Next time I do this, I’ll roast the bird for less time.

So as of now, despite feeling that leaving a crock pot on is relatively safer than a simmering stovetop pot, my preference is for the stovetop method of making stock, if only because I feel like I get “more” stock and also get to skim off crud. Of course, neither of these might matter all that much. But there’s something about a big pot slowly bubbling on the stove that speaks to me much more distinctly than a plugged-in device taking up counter space.

I’d love to hear from you about your experiences with crock pot stock.