As promised, here’s the recipe first. My comments and how I got the recipe are below.
Ingredients
Recipe
- Pat the chicken dry and season with salt and pepper. Put some oil in your pot (I used my dutch oven because it’s magical, but just make sure to use a pot big enough for 8 cups of water and the chicken).
- Brown your chicken on both sides (and the edges if necessary)–this takes about 4-5 minutes. Don’t crowd your chicken so if it doesn’t all fit at once do it in batches.
- Put all the chicken back in the pot along with all of your herbs. Add 8 cups of water.
- Bring to a boil and then down to a simmer. Simmer for 1 hour.
- Strain your broth into a bowl. Literally put a colander (like you use for your pasta) over a bowl and strain through that. Pick out the herbs and throw them out.
- That’s it! Now you have both chicken broth and cooked chicken meat (don’t forget that your meat has bones in it–pull those out before eating).
There are a few things that have seemed weirdly intimidating to me to make from scratch so I’ve avoided them for a while. Roasting a whole chicken was one. Making chicken broth (or stock, honestly I use those words interchangeably, do they mean different things?) was the other big one. Thankfully, both of these were shockingly easy to make once I actually set out to make them.
You’re probably not surprised at this point but both of these recipes came from Chrissy Teigen. This past holiday weekend I had enough time to go make Chrissy’s Chicken & Dumplings recipe from her cookbook Cravings: Hungry for More. I say I had enough time because she claimed the recipe takes two and a half hours to make and that woman was not lying. I’m not trying to get sued over here so I’m not going to write out her recipe for you but I will tell you 2 things: it was absolutely delicious and she tricks you into making your own broth from scratch so you’re not scared.If you follow me on Instagram you probably saw me make this recipe on my stories, if you don’t follow me yet you really should since I post great cooking content over at @joslinschultz.
The first step of the recipe was making the chicken broth and it was so much easier than I expected. Seriously, so easy. I modified it slightly since I had some different herbs and feelings about the spices I wanted in my broth.
Are there any recipes you’ve either seen or heard me make that you’d like me to share? Anything you’ve been afraid to make that I should try so you don’t have to? Let me know!
xoxo,
J
"This is the best soup I have ever had" – a friend who ate the soup this broth was used for.