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| Making Your Own Salty Chicken Broth at Home is Easy |
Low-carb diets are dehydrating because the kidneys dump extra sodium along with those ketones. Salty chicken broth is an easy way to replenish your sodium stores, keep electrolytes in balance, and avoid the Atkins Flu.
Here's how to make your own salty chicken broth at home.
Going into ketosis can upset your mineral levels because of the amount of water you lose during the transitional period. Glycogen, the storage form of carbohydrates and glucose, requires a lot of water to process.
Lose too much water, too quickly, and you'll flush out:
- sodium
- magnesium
- potassium
- calcium
- and other important minerals
While some people attribute the symptoms of the Atkins Flu to sugar or carbohydrate withdrawal, and others believe you aren't eating enough fat, the number one reason for feeling like crap after you ditch the carbs is a lack of sodium.
To nip the Atkins Flu in the bud, the remedy is simple:
Make your own salty chicken broth!
This post will show you how.
What's the Difference Between Chicken Broth and Bone Broth?
For decades, chicken broth has been the home remedy for a cold, flu, virus, digestive problem, or anything else that ails you. For that reason, I learned how to make chicken soup from a very young age.
Science has been slow to figure out why, but my own theory is: glutamine.
Glutamine is a non-essential amino acid, which means the body can make it from other substrates. You don't have to eat it every day because it's stored in your muscles. However, if you:
- are under emotional or physical stress
- have an infection or wound
- were recently injured
- suffer with a bowel disorder
- have a compromised immune system
Glutamine is the amino acid that feeds your intestinal lining, so if the body can't make enough on its own, or you're using up what you make due to stress, your gut barrier will suffer.
Instead of protecting your bloodstream from viruses, bacteria, undigested food particles, and other debris, the cells won't have the necessary strength to keep invaders out.
While the immune system is a great backup system that can step in when the intestinal barrier fails, a weak intestinal lining will keep the immune system consistently on high alert and reacting.
With plenty of glutamine, however, the spaces between the cells will tighten up and get back on the job, which might be why chicken soup has always been so healing.
Chicken soup also makes a great way to maintain the integrity of your gut lining, even if you don't currently have any problems.
While most of the glutamine your body makes goes to feed the intestines, glutamine is a non-essential protein that's found throughout the body.
The trendy broth right now is called bone broth.
It can be made with any animal bones you like.
However, bone broth differs from traditional chicken broth because you use vinegar in the water to help break down the mineral composition of the bones.
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| Bone broth can be made with your favorite animal bones. It is slightly different from traditional soup broths because you use vinegar to dissolve the minerals. |
Since I'm a big Adelle Davis fan, a biologist who used to write nutrition books and cookbooks when I was a young mom, I've always made my chicken broth this way.
Bone broth isn't new.
It's just a fancy name for soup broth where the bones have been simmered over the stove in a water-vinegar combo for several hours.
Salty chicken broth isn't always made this way.
You can certainly whip up a quick, tasty, chicken broth suitable for Atkins Induction using chicken bouillon or paste, but chicken paste will cost you 2 carbs per teaspoon, so this post is going to teach you how to make the real thing from scratch.
What Part of the Chicken is Best to Use for Chicken Broth?
Soup broth is one of those places where you have to use at least some form of dark meat chicken.
While a whole chicken is fine, if you opt for just the chicken breast, your broth won't be as rich and flavorful as it would be with wings, legs, thighs, and chicken backs.
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| Dark meat makes the best chicken broth. You can use legs, thighs, wings, or backs. |
I never use chicken breast to make the broth itself.
If you're on a tight budget, use whatever dark-meat chicken parts are the most economical. In our area today, we have a few hispanic stores that sell chicken legs and quarters for less than 75 cents a pound almost every week.
When my kids were little, I used to buy chicken backs in huge packages for less than a dollar, but I never see them sold like that any more. With the advent of the hot-wing craze, chicken wings are far too expensive today to be turned into soup.
Even at the hispanic stores near by, here in Texas, we have to pay over 2 dollars a pound for wings.
You can also save leftover bones or the backs and wings from whole chickens in a zip-lock bag in the freezer. Although using a whole chicken is traditional, I'm not going to tell you to do that because whole chickens are not always the best buy.
At least, not in Utah. Here in Texas, however, we can often get them for less than a dollar a pound.
In Utah, a whole chicken costs around 1.50 a pound, where thighs are only 99 cents in bulk at Costco, and legs can often be picked up for even less than that. Here, in Texas, a whole chicken is closer to a dollar a pound, or more, but chicken parts are generally much cheaper than that.
If whole chickens are less expensive in your area than parts, you can either use a whole chicken or cut off the wings and back, saving them in a zip-lock back in the freezer until you have enough for a pot of broth.
We have a small upright freezer that I bought at Sears about four years ago when it was on sale for $300, so I normally use legs, thighs, or leg quarters for this chicken broth recipe. However, when we purchased our appliances for the house we just bought, large freezers were going for only $400.
What Type of Soup Pot Do You Need?
You don't have to go out and purchase a top-of-the-line stockpot. For decades, I used a Granite Ware Stew Pot for both soups and stews, similar to the photo above. I've also made chicken broth in a crock pot.
The only downside to using a cheap pot is that you'll need to keep a closer eye on the water content, so the chicken meat and bones stay covered throughout the cooking process. Since steam escapes during cooking, you'll need to replace the water often, and this includes a crock pot.
Some cheaper models don't have tight fitting lids, so the liquid you add at the beginning will often steam away.
Alternatively, I sometimes use an Aroma Digital Slow Cooker.
The most important aspect of the pot you choose for soup is size.
While cooking the broth down will intensify the flavor, initially, you'll need to keep the meat and bones completely covered with water, so how big a pot you need depends on how much chicken broth you plan to make.
How Much Chicken Broth Should You Make?
Atkins Nutritionals recommends that you drink at least 1 to 2 cups of salty broth every day until your body adjusts to carbohydrate restriction. At that time, most people find a cup of broth to be plenty, but you don't have to drink just the broth.
You can use your salty chicken broth or bone broth to make soup, stew, low-carb gravy, and a variety of sauces, as well.
It's also easy to freeze in small plastic containers. I like the two-cup Rubbermaid Take Along style:
Because the lids twist down water-tight. They are handy for either freezer or storing your broth in the refrigerator, as well as taking it to work, but as long as the lid snaps shut, so frost won't get into the container before you use it, any brand is fine.
If you don't have freezer room, you'll need to make this chicken broth recipe more often, since it will only last in the refrigerator for a few days. Alternatively, you could also make enough for a week, and then just freeze two to three days worth of broth.
How to Make Salty Chicken Broth at Home
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| How to Make Salty Chicken Broth Yourself |
Ingredients:
- Accumulated bones, meat trimmings, chicken parts
- 2 to 4 quarts of water
- 2 to 4 tablespoons sea salt
- 2 to 4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- vegetable parings and leftovers (optional)
- 2 to 3 stalks of celery cut in chunks
- a thickly sliced small onion
- ¼ to ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 2 to 3 crumbled bay leaves
Place the lid on the pot, and then bring it to a hard boil. Once the water is boiling, turn the heat down to low, and let it simmer on the stove for at least 3 to 4 hours.
If you're doing this is a crock pot or slow cooker, add the chicken, water, salt, and apple cider vinegar to the crock. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.
For bone both, you can either cook the bones on the stove for up to 30 hours, or cook the soup in a huge crockpot or slow cooker, so it can continue to cook overnight. A slow cooker, like the Aroma brand above seals very tightly while cooking. No steam will escape, so it's a good choice for overnight cooking.
At this point, you can take the lid off the pot and simmer the soup to reduce the water. If using a crock pot or slow cooker, pour the broth into a soup pot for this step. Removing the lid will also allow any vinegar smell to evaporate before you move to the next step.
Once your broth is as rich as you want it to be, add your vegetable parings, if using, celery chunks and sliced onion. Try to shove the vegetables down into the stock, so they are completely covered with liquid. You need the bay leaves crumbled because you won't be cooking this very long.
Place the lid on the pot, and simmer slowly for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat.
You don't really want to cook the vegetables in the broth for too long, unless you're going to use the broth to make a chicken-vegetable soup, as the vegetables will overpower the chicken flavor.
How to Store Homemade Chicken Broth
Cool the broth slightly, then strain the soup using a colander, to make it easier to discard the bones and soggy vegetables. Chop up any chicken meat and save it for another use. Place the chicken broth into a large container and refrigerator overnight.
This will allow the fat to rise to the surface and congeal.
Either store the salty chicken broth in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or divide into small containers and freeze. You can either keep the fat with the broth, discard the fat, or use it in your low-carb cooking.
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