How to Make Rich Homemade Chicken Broth from Scratch

Using two large bone-in, skin-on chicken breast halves, you can easily make rich, homemade chicken broth in your slow cooker or crockpot. This method yields more than two quarts of flavorful broth plus tender cooked chicken that can be shredded or chopped for other recipes.

While a whole roasted chicken also makes excellent broth, bone-in skin-on breast halves are convenient and quick to handle. The bones and skin add depth of flavor that plain boneless chicken can’t match, and once cooked it only takes a few minutes to remove the skin and bones and shred the meat. A whole bird gives a deeper color and richer taste, but breasts produce a light, delicate broth that works beautifully in soups and creamy dishes.

When I roast a whole chicken, I either freeze the carcass to make broth later or prepare the broth immediately; the same approach applies if you make corn stock with bare corn cobs. Roasted bones create a deeply colored stock, while raw or simply cooked chicken yields a lighter, subtler broth that’s perfect for classics like chicken noodle soup, pozole verde, chicken pot pie, and pot pie soup.

More Homemade Broth Recipes

• Pork Bone Broth
• Beef Bone Broth
• Miso Ramen Broth
• Shoyu Ramen Broth

How to Make Homemade Chicken Broth

Step 1: Add all ingredients to the slow cooker — chopped onion, chopped carrot, chopped celery, fresh parsley, the bone-in skin-on chicken breast halves, salt, whole black peppercorns, and water.

Step 2: Cook on high for about 5 hours. Remove the chicken, discard the skin and bones, and reserve the meat for another use. Strain the broth to remove solids, then serve or cool and freeze for later.