When you think about chicken broth, you probably imagine many ingredients and long hours of boiling. Looking at it closer, with its floating oil bubbles, the scents it gives off and its strawy colour, there are actually few mysteries hiding in chicken broth. We have, of course, decided to unveil a good part of them to you!
Chicken broth? Homemade is better!
Used as a warm sauce where to cook capelletti or canederli or together with a thousand flavour risotto, it doesn't matter: a good homemade broth is the right idea for Sunday lunches or warm dinners relaxing in front of your favourite TV series. Making chicken broth at home may seem like a complicated and time-consuming process to you, but in fact this recipe does not require complicated procedures or mysterious ingredients. And the result is that you have lunch and the basic ingredient to flavour many other recipes the next days.
All we advise you to do is to follow some easy steps that will help you to have ready such a very flavoured as a versatile ingredient in any occasion.
What do we mean by chicken broth?
So, by chicken broth we mean the result obtained by boiling meat, vegetables and herbs in salted water and oil for at least a couple of hours. At the end of the process, the water reaches a nice intense yellow colour and gives off a full-bodied scent of boiled meat mixed with that of cooked vegetables.
The ingredients you can insert in the broth are at your discretion and you can choose them according to your taste - there is no limit to imagination in the kitchen. Along with meat, you can let boil carrots, celery, tomatoes, but also spinach, potatoes or whatever you like (as long as it is good, of course).
The result of this procedure is a liquid that is not only warm and tasty, but above all a very nutritious dish. Indeed, broth is a combination of vitamins, minerals and lean proteins. That's not all: thanks to its particular liquid form, broth naturally allows you to supply your body with water. Two advantages in one dish only!
Some simple tricks
A good chicken broth does not need the most valuable pieces of meat. On the contrary: anciently, broth was obtained from leftover bones with little meat. Should you prefer to use richer meat parts, you would have a fantastic advantage: you can cook two dishes in one go!
It’s not a matter of layered or steam cooking, it's much simpler than that. Indeed, the ingredients you placed to boil to prepare your chicken broth can become a light second course. How? With boiled meat, of course. Boiled meat is a dish that is prepared with just the leftover meat from the broth: chicken cooked together with vegetables becomes a very tasty ingredient, created with zero effort and without requiring extra time. A dish to enjoy on its own with the vegetables boiled in the broth and a little extra virgin olive oil to be drizzled when the broth will have cooled down or together with a little mayonnaise.
You can also prepare your chicken broth a long time in advance, because you can easily decide to cook a big pot of chicken and freeze your broth in single portions to use when needed. Convenient, isn't it?
