Stock

My cooking soapbox of the day...
For the love of all that is holy in the kitchen, please make chicken stock rather than buy boxed or canned chicken flavored salt water.
First lets look at the cost of making a pot of stock. You'll spend $4 on a whole chicken, plus toss in onion, celery and carrot (leek if you want to spend too much money on fancy onions). You'll make about a gallon of stock, plus you get a whole poached chicken to make meals with. You can use the chicken to make soup (duh), enchiladas, chicken salad, casserole....
On the other hand canned chicken stock is about $1 a can (1 1/2 cups). A gallon of store bought stock will cost you something like $10.

Now factor in the taste. There is no compare between store bought broth and homemade. Homemade tastes like cozy, and actually like chicken. You control the amount of salt, and you  know that it is made with real ingredients because YOU made it. Store bought is salty...so salty and to me tastes and smells like fake chicken.

The only down side of homemade stock is it takes some time. My way takes a couple of hours, but on the upside I can freeze it in 1 1/2 cup batches in either mason jars (leave 1 inch head space) or freezer ziplock bags.

Here's how I make my stock.

1 chicken
1 gallon water
a handful of baby carrots or 2 carrots diced
2 stocks of celery chopped
1 onion chopped into quarters
2 T dried parsley or some fresh if you have it
ground pepper

Put all in a large pot, bring to a boil and then turn to a gentle simmer for 1 hour. Remove the chicken from pot. Let cool enough to pull the meat off the chicken. Return bones and skin to the pot, and simmer for another hour. Strain broth and cool until its cold enough to pour into whatever containers you're storing it in (jars, plastic containers, bags...whatever). Throw away the bones and veggies from the pot. Use the chicken meat for whatever meal you wish.
*A note on salt...I prefer to add salt to my soups as I'm cooking them. When I add salt to broth I always end up with too salty of soup. That's why no salt in this recipe.

Another stock option is to buy a grocery store roasted chicken for an easy dinner (or cook a chicken however you would on a normal dinner night), then thrown the carcase, some celery, onion and carrot into a pot with 1/2 gallon of water. Simmer for about an hour. I did this with a carcase from a barbecued chicken last month and the broth was so good, we could have eaten it on its own. The soup I made with that stock was beyond good.

I hope I've inspired you to at least consider making stock. Thanks for suffering through my rant.