What would YOU do with 3 pounds of chicken necks?
A common household dilemma, right? (I hope you are picking up on my thick sarcasm)
I’ve never had to ponder the fate of a bag of chicken necks until my parents generously shared a portion of Amish chickens that they had ordered. They sent us home with a cooler of whole and quartered freshly slaughtered, organic chickens but hidden within their generous gift to us was a bag of necks. We went though the other chickens fast but the bag of necks sat in our deep freeze for months. I was about to toss them out when my mom told me they packaged them up so you could make chicken stock out of them. Oooooh. So THAT’S what I should do with them.
I’ve never made chicken stock before so I set out to find a recipe.
What I found was that there are a gazillion different recipes and ways to make chicken stock. I finally landed on a version of this one from the food network.
So now that I had 9-10 cups of chicken stock, what did I do with it??
Well, I used our chicken noodle soup recipe and made a big ‘ol batch. This came in handy when both my husband and I came down with some sort of flu bug. We still have quite a few servings of the soup in the freezer that I plan to use in the near future. Yum! I was pretty glad I didn’t chuck that bag of chicken necks out!
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A simple combination of chicken and veggies will help you create a healthy, delicious homemade chicken stock. Freeze some to use in homemade soups!
Ingredients
- 3–4 lbs of thawed chicken parts (in my case, necks)
- 1 large onion quartered
- 4 carrots peeled and cut in half
- 4 stalks of celery, cut in half
- A handful of fresh thyme
- A handful of fresh basil
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 whole cloves of garlic
- about 9–10 cups water
Instructions
- Bring all ingredients to a boil in a large stock pot and then lower to a simmer, uncovered for about 2-3 hours.
- Strain out all ingredients leaving just the chicken stock.
- Note: Some recipes say to refrigerate overnight at this point, but I didn’t do this.
Notes
Freezer Meal Instructions:
To Freeze:
Let stock cool completely. Ladle in to freezer safe bags or containers and store for up to 3 months.
To Prepare:
Pull individual sizes of chicken stock from freezer and let thaw in refrigerator overnight. Use in soups, casseroles, or any meal that calls for chicken stock.
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Are you sure it’s only9 cups of water ?? Cause I tired this and after six hours the water was all gone 🙈🙈
Thanks for letting us know about this. I double checked a few sources and I think we had the cooking time length wrong for some reason. Should only be 2-3 hours, not 5-6. So I made that change. Sorry about that, but I’m glad we got this older recipe corrected!
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I’m 64 and have grown up eating chicken necks and backs both fried, and in chicken and dumplings. Give them a try and you’ll be surprised how good they are. I love them either way.
How long will this last in the refrigerator? We use chicken stock instead of water to cook rice, so it wouldn’t all get used at once.