Home › Home & Kitchen › Kitchen & Dining › Cookware › Stockpots How to Make Chicken Stock Published: July 9, 2026 · Updated: July 9, 2026
Put chicken bones or a carcass and aromatics — onion, carrot, celery — in a stockpot, cover with cold water, and simmer gently for 2–4 hours, skimming the foam and never letting it boil hard. Strain and cool it quickly; a bare, low simmer is what keeps the stock clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy and greasy.
Recommended Cold-water start, gentle simmer 2–4 hours, skim, strain, cool fast — never a hard boil — Stock is just water drawing flavor and gelatin out of bones over time, and the one rule that decides quality is a bare simmer, because a rolling boil churns fat and proteins back in and turns the stock cloudy and greasy. Use raw or leftover roasted bones (a roast chicken carcass is ideal; roasting raw bones first deepens the color and flavor), and add roughly chopped onion, carrot, and celery, plus a bay leaf, peppercorns, and parsley stems. Cover everything with cold water — starting cold helps proteins rise as skimmable foam — bring it slowly to a bare simmer with just a few bubbles breaking the surface, and skim off the grey foam early. Let it go gently, uncovered or barely covered, for 2–4 hours (longer for a richer, more gelatinous stock), topping up water if bones poke out. Don't salt heavily now; season when you cook with it. Strain out the solids, then cool the stock quickly — an ice bath or shallow containers — and refrigerate within a couple of hours; the fat sets on top to lift off. It keeps about 4 days chilled or months frozen, and good stock turns to jelly when cold, a sign of all that gelatin.
