I have a huge Maslin pan which I normally use to make bone broth, stock and soup in but when my butcher gave me a couple of chicken breast bones recently, I decided to try out my slow cooker to make the stock.

I popped in the bones along with three carrots, two onions, a couple of bay leaves and two sprigs of fresh rosemary.   Topped the cooker up with water not forgetting a good slug of apple cider vinegar (the acid helps make the nutrients in the bones more available).

Ready for turning on

I popped the lid on and simmered the stock for 24 hours.   After letting it cool, I strained the stock and had four pints of deliciously rich chicken stock ready for the freezer.

Cooling down before freezing in soup bags

I make a lot of soup and often the basis of a good soup is a good stock.  I also use stock in many recipes; use it to cook rice and quinoa and my husband enjoys a mugful  with a spoonful of Miso paste stirred in.

Although my Maslin pan enables me to make much larger quantities of stock and is also needed when I use large beef bones etc, the ease of use of the slow cooker proved invaluable.  I left it on for 24 hours without having to check it and four pints is a very reasonable amount of stock to freeze.

There are numerous interesting articles on the benefits of bone broth on the internet but the two I’ve read recently are from  WellnessMama and The Whole9 Bone Broth FAQ and they are both worth a look.

NB: All the photographs used in this blog have been taken by me, and are of food I have prepared myself