Backcountry Chicken Broth Base
Bone broth cooked down at home and dried into powder, so a hot cup of real stock weighs almost nothing.
- calories
- 90
- weight
- 0.7 oz
- cal / oz
- 129
- protein
- 9 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 3 min
- total time
- 8 min
- water
- 300 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Drink
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Liquid fuel
- Backpacking
- Thru-hike
- Winter / snow
- Basecamp
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Chicken carcasses, backs, skin, innards, and bones | from 2 whole chickens | save them in the freezer after roasting |
|---|---|---|
| Apple cider vinegar | 2 tbsp | pulls minerals out of the bone |
| Filtered water | enough to cover, about 12 cups | |
| Onion | 1, quartered | skin on is fine |
| Carrots | 2, cut in chunks | |
| Celery ribs | 2, cut in chunks | |
| Parsley | a small handful | goes in at the very end |
| Salt | 1 tsp per finished serving | added at camp, not at home |
Method
- At home: pile the bones, skin, and innards into a slow cooker with the vinegar, vegetables, and enough water to cover. Low for 24 hours if you have it, 10 hours minimum. Leave it unsalted.
- Drop the parsley in for the last ten minutes, then shut the cooker off and strain everything through a fine sieve. Discard the solids.
- Chill the strained stock and lift off the fat cap. Fat will not dry, and any left behind will turn the powder rancid in your food bag.
- Simmer the defatted stock down hard until about 12 cups become 2. Spread it on lined dehydrator trays and run at 135F until it is a dry, brittle sheet, roughly 10 to 12 hours.
- Break the sheet up and grind it to powder. You should end up with about 8 tablespoons. One tablespoon is one serving.
- In camp: boil 300 ml of water, kill the heat, and stir in one tablespoon of powder plus a good pinch of salt. Stir until no grit sits on the bottom.
A slow cooker running for a full day is doing one thing: hydrolyzing collagen out of bone into water. The vinegar helps, and the long low heat matters more than the vegetables do. What you get is mostly water, which is exactly the wrong thing to carry, so the trail version adds two steps the original does not need. Defat, then reduce and dry.
Skimming the fat is not optional. Fat does not dehydrate, it goes rancid, and it will spot through a paper bag in a week. Salt is left out until camp for the same reason the source leaves it out at home: reducing twelve cups to two concentrates whatever salt is already in there, and you cannot take it back out. Eight tablespoons of powder weighs under six ounces total and replaces a gallon of liquid stock.
Packing
Powder goes in a small screw-top jar or a doubled zip bag with the salt already mixed in. It draws water out of the air, so add a rice packet or a silica pack and keep it away from anything damp.
Variations
- Stir the powder into instant potatoes or couscous instead of drinking it, and you have gravy.
- A teaspoon of powdered garlic and a shake of black pepper mixed into the jar makes it a soup base rather than plain stock.
- In cold weather, drink it straight from the pot before dinner. It is the cheapest way to get warm from the inside.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/slow-cooker-chicken-stock