# What to do with leftover chicken carcass?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [June 13, 2015, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417 "2015-06-13T04:59:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2015, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/21 "2015-06-13T20:55:56Z")
> [@Oedipus](#):
>
> I’m so confused. I thought the bones had to be clean to do stock or else it was just broth? Someone enlighten me.
What **D\_Odds** said, plus - do you really care? I make my stock from whatever carcasses I have in the freezer plus a selection of wings/thighs/legs (basically whatever I can get cheap) for flavor. It’s delicious, regardless of what you call it.
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### Author:  [@Tara57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tara57)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2015, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/22 "2015-06-13T21:41:35Z")
Dirty rice will use up the offal.
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### Author:  [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2015, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/23 "2015-06-13T21:59:22Z")
I was told that you need to add a little salt to the water when you make broth/stock, to better extract flavor from the food. But I’ve never tested this.
Certainly, it is preferable to under-salt, since it’s easy to add more salt later.
The foods I am brothifying have generally not been salted or brined prior to my cooking them into broth. The resulting liquid is rich and tasty (and often gels in the fridge) and not very salty.
I used to add all kinds of seasoning, garlic, bay leaves, etc. Now I don’t. I always use an onion (with the skin) and may throw in a carrot or some celery it it’s handy. Otherwise, I just use chicken carcasses, an onion, salt, pepper corns, and water.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2015, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/24 "2015-06-13T22:15:50Z")
I put in 2 onions, with skins, quartered. A few stalks of celery, and I take if from the middle so I get the leaves. And 3 carrots, chopped to about an inch or two. Bay leaves, salt. pepper, thyme and marjoram. Not much of the latter two.
Best to use cooked carcass scraps. Often I buy the bags of scraps from the grocer, and then I bake them beforehand.
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### Author:  [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2015, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/25 "2015-06-14T01:25:13Z")
I will offer up this for something different. I put out my trash in opaque white trash bags If there is a chicken carcass in there, the crows use their X-ray vision and scatter that trash bag all over the street within half an hour. How do they KNOW?
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2015, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/26 "2015-06-14T14:27:50Z")
> [@salinqmind](#):
>
> I will offer up this for something different. I put out my trash in opaque white trash bags If there is a chicken carcass in there, the crows use their X-ray vision and scatter that trash bag all over the street within half an hour. How do they KNOW?
Scent, I’ve always assumed.
I’ve played around with a bit of chicken placed under one of three small dixiecups, and our African Grey can pick the correct cup to knock over to get his reward.
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### Author:  [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2015, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/27 "2015-06-14T14:53:15Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> Best to use cooked carcass scraps. Often I buy the bags of scraps from the grocer, and then I bake them beforehand.
you get “brown” flavors from cooked scraps, but more gelatin from raw bits. Ideally, I use some of each. In practice, I use whatever I have.
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### Author:  [@GoodOldKJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GoodOldKJ)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2015, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/28 "2015-06-15T02:35:27Z")
Best campfire treat ever is chicken hearts done in a Mt pie maker with a cold dark beer!
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### Author:  [@OffByOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OffByOne)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2015, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/30 "2015-06-18T16:13:57Z")
Shallow grave?
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2015, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/31 "2015-06-18T18:33:03Z")
Whole chickens are as close as my family gets to the “everything but the cluck” ideal.
First, we usually roast the chicken and have a meal like that. Leftover meat and any reasonably sized bits my wife can get off the carcass end up as chicken soup and/or chicken salad (my favorite dish of the process), depending on the amount of meat. The bones, skin and wingtips usually end up as stock, which often goes into the aforementioned soup.
The stock always has onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves, peppercorns and thyme, and sometimes it gets one or all of whole garlic cloves, summer savory and marjoram.
We usually don’t salt it, with the expectation that we’ll salt the finished dish we use it in.
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### Author:  [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2015, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-leftover-chicken-carcass/722417/32 "2015-06-18T20:12:01Z")
I never liked chicken livers- they were just too liver-y. So, I boiled them for the dog. One day, I tried a bite. YUM. The boiling had removed enough of the liveriness to really change the flavor, compared to the fried ones I’d tried in the past. Worth a try if one is curious.
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