Huh. The only time I made stock, it was an accident from cooking the chicken in the crock pot. When I refrigerated the broth, it gelatinized.
BTW, how do you tell the difference from the fat you are saying floats on top, and the gelatin? I just used all of it when I made chicken and dumplings (The first time I liked dark meat over white.)
The fat will float to the top when the liquid is not disturbed, that is, when you’re not stirring it and it’s only simmering gently. The gelatin will be in the broth itself, and won’t separate out.
You used to be able to get a mesh insert, like a giant economy size strainer basket. Let me hit google and see if they still make them =)
Hm, looks like not. Though I suppose you could bag the bird in a hops strainer bag.
Though if you can score stainless steel screening, I see no reason you could not make your own by lining a pasta penta with the screening. I admit to using the jumbo tea balls for holding my herbs so I don’t have to fish them out 
Especially when refrigerated, the difference should be obvious. The fat looks and feels like butter (white, and solid) while the broth/stock will probably look like Jell-o (jiggly, brownish and semi-transparent). If the broth is very dilute, it may still be liquid, but the fat will always solidify in the fridge. The layers often separate enough that the fat will pop right off in big pieces.
If there’s not too much fat, using all of it can be quite tasty. You just don’t want so much fat that you have an oil slick on your soup.
I do it even lower - one “bloop” every 10 seconds or so. Anything faster is considered a boil by culinary school standards.
I agree with doing the noodles or rice separately. Whenever I get lazy and do it in the same pot and freeze it, I end up with mushy chicken flavored rice or mush when it’s thawed.
Another tip I’ll share, because it got good response last time: if you get the stock the way you like it (strained and all) put it back on the stove and boil off 7/8 of the water. You can freeze the resulting demi-glace in ice cube trays. Throw two cubes into a measuring cup and add water to make 1 cup, and you have more or less instant homemade stock which takes up far less freezer space than regular strength stock.
To measure easily, take a wooden spoon and put it handle down in your stock. Note the wet mark, and visually divide it into 8 - put a rubber band at the first 1/8th spot. Now you can stick the spoon handle back into the stock periodically as it boils; when you can see the rubber band, you’re done!
You cold even boil it down further and make a goo out of it, but the reconstituting math stymies me.
I don’t understand this. You say you cooked the chickens, now you want to make soup. Did you roast them or something? To make homemade chicken soup you stew chicken (boil in a big pot of water till it’s done. I hate it—stringy & tasteless. But to go on…while you were boiling the chicken (at least seasoned, I hope) big globules of yellow fat should have been floating to the top. That’s your broth. Take the chicken out. Throw it away. (That’s my opinion.) Now add finely diced carrot, onion & celery & cook for a while at a slow boil. (Oh, wait. Pull the chicken out of the garbage & pick off some of the meat to add to the soup. Then throw it back in the trash.) If you want me to tell you how to catch it, kill it & clean it, I can. More fun than eating stewed chicken.
Soup’s on.
Why waste the chicken meat? Chicken stock isn’t the same thing as chicken stew (which I never cook until “stringy and tasteless”, just done through), and can be made with the bones leftover from roasted, fried, or stewed chicken you’ve eaten on previous nights with little meat. I keep a large Ziploc in my freezer with scavenged chicken bones just for this purpose, as well as other bags of vegetable peels and scraps. My stock is basically kitchen waste, made useful and tasty, and then the stock gets used to make chicken soup with fresh, not overcooked, chicken meat.
Becky, while that method will make a soup, (except for the pulling the meat out of the trash part - ew.) I don’t want to waste a chicken on it. I use store bought rotisserie chickens a lot and when I’m done with the carcass, I save the bones for stock. I also use the following method with my Thanksgiving turkey carcass.
Toss bones and skin leftover from a chicken or turkey carcass into a 12qt or bigger stockpot. Break a couple of ribs of celery and a couple of big carrots into rough halves and toss in. Halve or quarter and onion and toss in. Add a good handful of salt (maybe 3 tablespoons) and a palmful of peppercorns (maybe 1-2 tablespoons), a sprig of fresh rosemary if you have it and then cover with water to within 2 inches of the top of the pot.
Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to low and simmer for 5-8 hours. I taste along the way for seasoning and because the aroma of stock simmering away on the stove is quite irresistible to me. When it’s to your liking, strain out all of the solids and throw away. They have given up all of their flavor to the liquid and are not good for anything else. Let cool down a bit, then refrigerate the whole pot. The fat will solidify on top making it easy to remove. You can save the chicken fat to cook with if you like or toss if you don’t. If you’ve made the stock properly what is left will be chicken jelly. Delicious chicken jelly. You can return this to the stove and bring up to a simmer if you are ready to make soup.
For my soup ingredients I use a rib or two of chopped celery, either baby carrots or some sliced carrots, meat from a cooked chicken (usually the one I just used the carcass from), corn, egg noodles and a couple of minutes before serving I toss in a handful of frozen peas. All you have to do is simmer for 15-20 minute till the veg are tender and serve.
Okay, I was making light but what’s wrong with a little humour along with a recipe? This is quoted from another East Tennessee cook:
“When the home-slaughtered chicken was ‘dressed’ (cut up), if it was a young layer it would have a sac of egg yolks from pea size on up to laying size. Those were the future eggs that were forming. They would be carefully removed and then added to the water that boiled the chicken for chicken and dumplings. Cooked in that broth, they were delicious, kind of like egg drop soup but so much better!”
Could also be used for soup.
My grandmother would have been saddened by your all’s responses.
It didn’t really strike as a joke. Humor can be hard to “read” on a message board. This is why people use smileys – to communicate tone which is generally lost. So… sorry. I didn’t think it sounded like a joke either, although I didn’t respond.
That is by far the most disgusting thing I have ever heard of. And definitely not kosher. 
Ever heard of mountain oysters?