I save them up in the freezer until I have enough to make a stronger stock. That said — you’re right — sometimes something lighter is desired or all that’s necessary.
Naw, i hate the flaccid texture of overcooked chicken. I actually dislike that more than i do dry chicken, although drying out the chicken certainly takes a lot out of it, too. But I’ll eat a rotisserie chicken that sat under the heat lamps too long and dried out, and i throw away meat that i used to make soup.
As they say, there’s no accounting for tastes.
I keep one or two empty ice cream containers - any time I have a meal that results in leftover bones, they go into one of these containers and into the freezer - same thing with a bunch of veg trimmings, especially onion bases, celery roots and trimmings, carrot tops and peelings, pepper cores and most other veg except potato peels. (Potato peels, I find, almost subtract flavour from a stockpot).
When the box in the freezer is full, I tip it all in my big slow cooker, cover with boiling water and cook it for 6 hours, then drain it for use as stock - optionally freezing some of the prepared stock if not required straight away.
Any kind of bones go into the box - chicken carcass remnants from a Sunday roast, or bones from takeaways like Chinese ribs or even KFC - it doesn’t matter that someone might have gnawed on it - it’s going to be boiled for hours, and only served back to the family anyway.
The advantages of the freezer method are firstly, that small amounts of stuff, worthless in their own right, can be saved up until they are enough all together, and also, my requirement for stock rarely coincides with an immediate surplus of bones to make it.
I used to use it as an enchilada filling – I think I got the tip from Zarela Martinez’s book on Mexican cooking. What she does is fry up some oil, onions, and garlic, and then add the cooked chicken to it and fry up the mixture some more. This boosts the flavor of the chicken. It does actually work pretty well, especially when you have all that enchilada sauce. The other thing I’ll do is hold back some of the chicken meat, either half a breast or the thigh, and not use that in the broth, but add it in later when I’m cooking up a chicken noodle soup. So broth + fresh new veggies + diced raw chicken that was held back, cook, and ladle over cooked noodles in a bowl.
Making stock from roasted bones makes it a “brown” stock, rather than the “white” stock described by most other folks. The term ‘brown’ doesn’t refer to the color of the stock, only to the process.
As for what to put into your stock, I would only add that a small amount of fish sauce or Worcestershire will bump up the umami without changing the flavor. And I’m a really big fan of barley in my soups. But use hulled barley, not pearl. It really amps up the robustness of the soup/stew.
I actually rarely make soups; most the stock/broth I make ends up being used in smallish quantities for things like sauces and stews here and there which bring enough flavor from their other ingredients.
I do the same, only I use ziplock bags, the better to exclude air. And I store the chicken, veggies, and other birds in separate bags. (I guess I only make fowl broth, except when I set out to make ox tail soup, which is its own thing.)
Like romansperson, I use my fowl stock as an ingredient. It goes into chicken with ginger and scallion, or chicken curry, or as a base to make bean soup or potato soup. I almost never make chicken soup.
So I had the remains of two Costco chickens in the freezer and I was planning on making a batch of stock for some risotto yesterday. I had picked up a bulk bag of chicken wing portions and added 7 or 8 raw wings in with the rest.
The resulting stock / broth was outstanding; it had a very well rounded chicken flavor and silky mouthfeel. A coffee cup full of the salted stock by itself was so good that I almost didn’t want to waste it in risotto or anything else, just save it for enjoying on its own.
The stock today, after being refrigerated overnight, is so gelatinous it’s almost aspic.
So yeah, a mix of roasted bones and remains along with some raw chicken pieces does produce some really fine chicken stock. Thanks @puzzlegal!