I am making several large vats of chicken soup to store - I’ve cooked the chickens, taken a lot of meat off them, now I want to boil (?) the carcasses for the soup broth…
I was thinking boiling for an hour then slow for 3 more hours? Or slow [medium heat (?)] for 4 hours?
Any ideas on how long to cook these? How about good ideas for making sure no bones come into the soup.
Thanks
2 hours should be enough, but you can’t go wrong by going lower and slower.
You never really want to blast it at a full boil at all; it makes the soup cloudy. I usually simmer for three hours, but it depends on how much liquid you start with. More time won’t hurt - it’ll just make the soup richer.
When I do it for turkeys, I put everything in a pot and then turn on the burner to low before I go to bed. In the morning, I deal with the bones and broth. So that’s about eight hours, at the lowest burner setting on my gas range. In fact, because it starts at room temp, I suspect it takes an hour or more to even come up to a simmer, and it never has a full boil going.
A shorter time is surely sufficient (especially for a chicken with smaller bones), but you can’t beat the convenience of overnight (or the smell in the morning). I would avoid letting your stock get up to a full boil at all, and 3-4 hours is probably just fine.
To deal with the bones, I just use a colander in a second pot. Pour the entire first pot through the colander, then you have one pot with broth and the colander full of bones and misc bits. Some people strain a second time through cheesecloth, but I don’t bother. Cheesecloth does remove lots of little floating bits of stuff (probably pieces of meat, skin, connective tissues, etc) but these pieces are soft and not noticeable unless you’re straining through cheesecloth.
If you boil a chicken carcass for two hours, it is going to fall apart into many little bones. Strain the stock afterwards, or you will be picking ribs and vertebrae out of your soup forever. Don’t forget to add mirepoix(celery, onions and carrot that are discarded after simmering) at the beginning for more flavor.
Nice - thank you! I have the carcass in there, some onion and celery - and will let it go for about 5 hours…
So after I strain it, and take all the hard material off, and all I have is broth - do I need to cook it again with new veggies and breast meat? If so for how long? I am freezing this - minus a bowl for tonight though. 
Once you make the stock, the rest is easy. Just add chopped vegetables & chicken and simmer until tender, no more than 15-20 minutes.
If you want noodles just like you find in Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup, add linguine broken into 4 inch lengths. Turns into perfect chicken soup noodles. Rice is also good, though it takes a bit longer. Noodles or rice can be cooked separately, and added near the end, if you like. Just remember, if you cook them in the stock, it will reduce the liquid, as it will be absorbed by the noodles/rice.
In general, the more time the better. 4-6 hours is great to extract as much flavor as possible. But as noted by others, don’t boil! Your stock will become cloudy. You should simmer at around 180-190.
If you’re worried about it taking too long, you can chop up the chicken into small bits to maximize the surface-area-to-volume ratio; this should reduce the cooking time substantially. You should taste it as it goes along
Also, any veggies should be put in at the end, cooked for the last 45 minutes or so. Cooking them as long as the chicken will result in a cloudy stock, and also possibly too sweet if you include carrots.
Finally, salt should also go in at the end, tasting a bit at a time to get the seasoning right.
I make mine in a pasta pot inside the biggest pasta insert. Lift out insert to remove most of the solids. You still have to strain it a little, but I find it’s easier to just strain out little bitty bits than to have entire thighbones splashing out of the pot.
Don’t forget a bay leaf and/or some thyme. Also: garlic.
I would suggest not putting noodles or rice directly into the soup. If you plan to store any leftovers, the pasta/rice will turn into a gluey mess as it absorbs more liquid. I prefer to cook it separately, then ladle the soup over it. Also, dried veggies can cook in the soup. Fresh should go in at the end. In fact, I prefer to throw a few fresh into the bowl with the rice, then ladle hot soup over all. You get the pungency and aroma without losing the flavor.
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samclem, Moderator, General Questions
One hour in the pressure cooker if you have one.
Make sure you have enough liquid! The first time I tried to make a long-simmered chicken stock, I didn’t have enough liquid in the pan. I ended up with a mass of gelatin with some bones sticking out. 
A suggestion for next time: roast the carcasses before making stock. Just put them on a sheet pan and stick them in the oven for an hour or so at around 350. Take them out when they’ve gone all dark brown. Makes even yummier stock.
That’s called a “brown” stock. Unroasted bones make a “white” stock. Gelatin is good: it’s just concentrated stock called a demi-glace. Add water to a small amount and you have stock again.
In addition to the carcass+celery+onions, I suggest a bay leaf, a palmful of whole peppercorns, some garlic cloves and carrots cut in 2" chunks.
I use the rule of 4s
4lbs of chicken, 4 qts of water, 4 small onions, celery stalks, carrots, garlic cloves (each), 4 hours to simmer.
IMHO chicken soup made completely with stripped bones isn’t very flavorful. I cook with at least some of the meat on the carcass. If you’re going to use just bones use lots of veggies and herbs. I always keep veggie discards in the freezer to liven up soup. Right now I have some green tops from fresh fennel, bits of dill, onion greens, the stalks from swiss chard, and a couple other things I normally throw away but are edible and flavorful.
I keep a ziploc in the freezer full of chicken parts for stock, and a glass jar in the fridge with bits of onion, garlic, etc. from other recipes. I top it off with the dregs of a bottle of white wine (we kill many bottles of wine weekly in our household). Once the ziploc is full, it all goes into the pot.
I also do the overnight simmer. For Thanksgiving, it makes the house smell amazing before anything is really happening.
I use a pasta pot to make it easy to lift out the solids. I then strain using a chinois - which makes all the difference in solids IMHO.
I let the stock cool overnight in the fridge, and remove the layer of fat (save it for biscuits). Then I might cook down the remaining liquids until I have a nice demi glace for whatever the next round of use will be (Soup, sauces, etc.).
Don’t freeze it right away. Put in the fridge overnight and skim the fat off the next day. It will float to the surface and look like wax. It’s pretty easy to scrape it off with a spoon.
DO NOT BOIL. You want a simmer, which is “bloop, bloop” not more often than a second or two between bloops, because boiling fixes the collagen within the bones instead of releasing it into the stock.
Strain out the bones, skin, and whatever aromatics you added in - they have given their all for god and country. The meat is probably shot as well, although you could grab it early in the process to reuse (maybe 15 or 20 minutes). Add fresh aromatics to whatever you do with the stock.
If you are really good or lucky, you will end up with a gelatinous layer on top of your stock in the fridge, which is the uber-nice collagen.
AB likes a little splash of lemon juice in his chicken soup, but I don’t recall trying that.
I use the big colander in the big mixing bowl, and I don’t bother with cheesecloth. Make sure to pick the carcass(es) fairly clean first, because after it’s been simmered for a while, the meat will become powdery and flavorless. Throw it away, or give it to the cats. Wash and cut up onion, carrot, and celery. You DON’T need to peel the onion and carrot first, just make sure they’re clean. Throw away the veggies that have been simmered, as all the flavor is in the liquid now.
Every now and then, I roast a chicken, and strip the carcass of most of the meat. Then I make stock with the bones and any leftover skin. This doesn’t make much stock at a time, but I can just put the bones in a pot with some water and let simmer, and then reduce the liquid after I’ve strained it. Even if it’s not optimal, I can freeze it and have it ready for a base, or for when I get sick and want to eat something other than canned soup.