The Chicken Broth

No new recipes lately, since I'm munching through the weekend leftovers.  But, here's the complete story on the broth.

After throwing all the bones, skin, cartilage, onions, whatever back in the crockpot and adding a bunch of water, I let it simmer overnight. In the morning, I strained out all the solid bits and put the liquid in a container to settle.  You need to let the container sit undisturbed for like a day or so, which allows the fat to consolidate in a layer on top.

Full of anticipation, I skimmed off the fat layer, expecting to find liquid broth underneath. Much to my surprise, I had a lot of brown gelatinous stuff. Huh. In, quite possibly, the most un-appetizing picture ever on a food blog, here it is:

Looks especially unappealing in the yellow bowl.

I decided to re-refrigerate the gel, and deal with it later.  At work, I asked cook-extraordinaire Oh-Hanna, if that was what it was supposed to look like.  Luckily, the answer was yes.  Apparently depending on how much cartilage (or something) you use will depend on if it turns out gel-ish, or liquid-ish.  OH said that it could be reduced even more, but I decided to freeze it as is.

I put some in pint containers, and I put some in an ice-cube tray, for those times that you only need a little broth.  (What times would that be?  I picked up the hint somewhere on the web, and although it seemed brilliant and useful at the time, now I don't think I can actually name a recipe I've ever made that called for only 1 Tbl of broth.  Oh, well.)

It ending up making 3+ pints of (I'm assuming fairly concentrated) broth.  Or maybe it's technically stock.  Whatever.  Paprika surprise chicken soup, sometime in the future.

Have a good one!
Scooter