Slow cooker question - re cooking chicken carcass

sb44

Can someone please give me some advice re my slow cooker.

I cooked a whole chicken in it overnight and have removed the breast and legs to freeze.

I am now left with the carcass and the wings and need to know how to make stock or soup with this.

I have carrots, onions, spuds and a bouqi garni.

I need some help please on how to cook this now in the slow cooker (don't want to use the hob as our cooker isn't very cost effecient), ie how much water do I put in etc, etc. Can I make a soup out of this or just stock.

Ta.

watersedge

To make soup stock in a slow cooker do the following:

1.75 kg raw or cooked bones or poultry carcass
1 - onion chopped
1 - carrot chopped
1 - celery stick chopped
salt and whole black peppercorns
1 - bouquet garni sachet
boiling water - sufficient water to cover

1. Pre-heat slow cooker
2. Break up bones as small as possible to extract the most
flavour. Place all ingredients in the slow cooker with
sufficient boiling water to coverr. Cook on Low for 10-16
hours.
3. Discard the bouquet garni. Strain the stock and leave to
cool.
4. Skim off any surface fat and chill or freeze.

Samphire

Hi there! I often do chicken stock in the slow cooker, like so...

1. Preheat slow cooker.
2. Break up chicken carcass so it doesn't take up too much room and put in SC (this means you don't need as much water to cover it = better tasting stock)
3. Add some roughtly chopped veggies. I always put in a carrot or two, an onion and a few celery sticks but you can also add other stuff like leek tops if you've got any hanging around. Add a few peppercorns and a bayleaf or two if you have them about, maybe some fresh thyme (I have herbs growing in the garden so always have something on hand), squash with wooden spoon so it's all bashed down a bit and only just cover with boiling water
3. cook on low for 10-16 hours. I personally like to reduce mine down gently on the hob afterwards if I get a chance, but quite often I use it like this.

I often use this for chicken soup - just add some leftover chopped chicken and veggies (frozen broad beans work well) and season for a light chicken broth type thing. Or you can do my current fave and add a lemongrass stalk or 2, a star anise, a good glug of soy and fish sauces and heat it for 15 mins or so before adding leftover chicken and noodles (either straight to wok ones or dried ones that have been soaked in boiling water first). Yum you!!

sb44

Thanks folks.

I have put in 3/4 of a medium onion, a medium carrot, bouqui garni and hot water.

Haven't got any whole pepper corns to put in, should I put in some ground black pepper and salt?

mummysaver

Ground black pepper is fine, add salt to taste.

I love my slow cooker for stuff like this! Once you have made the stock fish everything out and strain it back into your SC, then add any bits of meat you can pick out and voila chicken soup! Add noodles and sweetcorn if you fancy chicken noodle soup (I use the cheapy value noodles, as they are just the right amount and nice and thin for soup and tinned sweetcorn, but frozen would be fine too).

The stock can also be used to make a veg soup, sweat a finely chopped onion, add a couple of carrots, a couple of sticks of celery and a potato and then cover with the stock and simmer till the veg are soft, you can then blend if you fancy a thick soup and add a swirl of cream if you want a richer soup.

sb44

mummysaver wrote: »

Ground black pepper is fine, add salt to taste.

I love my slow cooker for stuff like this! Once you have made the stock fish everything out and strain it back into your SC, then add any bits of meat you can pick out and voila chicken soup! Add noodles and sweetcorn if you fancy chicken noodle soup (I use the cheapy value noodles, as they are just the right amount and nice and thin for soup and tinned sweetcorn, but frozen would be fine too).

The stock can also be used to make a veg soup, sweat a finely chopped onion, add a couple of carrots, a couple of sticks of celery and a potato and then cover with the stock and simmer till the veg are soft, you can then blend if you fancy a thick soup and add a swirl of cream if you want a richer soup.

That's great, thanks very much.