I know some of you reading this have no earthly desire to make your own broth and that’s fine. You just want the recipes for the good, easier stuff, using canned or preferably boxed all natural MSG-free organic broths.  If you are still intrigued by the beauty of doin’ it yourself, great! Today I’m going to introduce meat to the rest of the love in the stock pot. We’ll get to the actual recipes for soup later.

Note: this is my way of doing things. I’ll probably change them as I learn and grow in my cooking but for now, this is working. I have a few REALLY good cook friends who’s brains I pick regularly, but there are never enough hours in the day to talk about all the things I don’t know in the culinary world. So here we go…

Remember how we threw everything in the pot for the veggie broth? How the pot was nice and hot on med-high heat and then when you put everything in it started browning? Same with meat. Get the pot hot with a T (big T denotes Tablespoon, little t is a teaspoon) or so of olive oil.

The next step is crucial for browning your meat because that’s where all of the rich flavor comes from. So take the meat, (let’s say chicken for now, a whole fryer or roaster, 4 lbs-ish) and rinse and pat it dry with paper towels. Liberally salt and pepper – and please – use sea or kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper! There’s no flavor in the pre-ground variety.

Plop the whole bird into the pot breast side down. It should sizzle immediately! If not, your pot wasn’t hot enough. The oil needs to be shimmering. Leave it to brown for a couple of minutes, and then I always give it a quick shake to loosen up the skin from the bottom of the pan. If the oil was hot enough it won’t stick, it will just brown beautifully. 7-8 minutes later, lift a side of the bird to hopefully see some crispiness occurring, just a light golden brown will do. If that lovely earthy color is there, take some tongs and flip the chicken to brown the other side.

Once it’s done, add your other broth ingredients. I stick with the usuals for chicken broth: quartered whole onions skin still on (2), roughly chopped carrots and celery, leaves and all (3 each), whole crushed garlic cloves, 2-10 depending on your garlic obsession, a handful of fresh parsley and thyme, and a T of whole peppercorns. I like the peppercorn medley, there are so many layers of flavor. Also, if you love lemons as much as I, you’ll want to halve one, squeeze it’s juice in, and then throw either half or the whole rind in. I do the whole then pull it out halfway, much like I did the fennel in the veg broth. The idea here is to meld the flavors and not have one prominent.

Cover all of this with water plus a little more. Bring it to a boil, cover it, bring the heat down to med-low. Your pot should be simmering, gently bubbling, for at least an hour and a half. I usually let mine go for a couple of hours because the chicken just falls right off the bone, making it so much easier to pick the meat and get it into the soup itself.

Let the broth cool. It will need a good half hour at least. Then with your tongs, pull the chicken out carefully, yes it’s limbs will probably fall off. Get them all and put them in a big pot. Let it cool, and then start picking the meat off. While you’re doing that, your broth should be cooling off too so that you can then (triple) strain it in your sieve and toss the cooked veggies.

Now you have the basis for some darn good chicken soup. Recipes to come. If you can call them that… I’m a pinch, handful, dash-er… if you know what I mean. C’est la vie!

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