Chicken stock ingredients/ recipe and a few things

It’s my 21st (as of 2 days) so give me a break on the sodas, they’re for mixed drinks. Def nonessential but still under $8 for something that will last me probably over a week. I got some milk and chicken specifically for protein. The chicken was on manager’s special and was $3.08. I couldn’t NOT get it. I can’t buy mass produced stocks due to being allergic to carrot and celery, so I have to make my own from scratch, and I want to see what the financial impact is. It’s gonna cost;

3.08 for whole chicken
8.60 for leq quarters 4.30 1/2 package
.08 for lemongrass
.79 for garlic
1.06 for onion
2.69 for herbs

Plus some whole peppercorn and clove I have here at home, which are $1.99 e per package. (El guapo brand).

For the ingredients as bought (not including salt) it would be a bit over $20 with tax. From a restaurant style economy standpoint (which is how I try to budget as most of my food waste is upcycled and I’m not just buying ingredients for recipes besides in instances like this,) most of the chicken meat is going to get turned into shredded chicken, so we can say that the $7.38 on chicken is actually closer to a few dollars (gonna make it a clean $2.50 for ease, $1.50 for the chicken carcass and $1 for the bones out of the legs) at most on the scraps. I’m not using all my peppercorns and cloves (6~ pieces e), so we can cut that down to a quarter each. Factor in a quarter for the oil I’ll be using while roasting. Before I do the math here, I want to say that the great thing about stocks and broths is that the yield can kind of be stretched by further reductions. Obviously I’m not going for an ultra gelatinous or dark stock, but it’s possible for me to stop as soon as I have a coherent stock OR I can keep going and reducing until I don’t have enough freezer storage for it all. So I’m gonna say that I’ll be getting about 2.5 qts or 80 oz, since the bones and veg are gonna take up some volume in my stock pot.

$2.50 for roasted chicken bones
$4.70 for other bought ingredients (rounded to nearest tenth for each item)

50¢ for pepper and cloves, up to $1 for optional spices and salt

30¢ for oil (rounding again for ease and to compensate for error, honestly oil is so cheap it’s only this much as I use highish end olive oil when I can get it on sale.)

So we’re spending definitely under $10, maybe like $9.50 on 80+ oz of chicken bone broth. Kettle and fire is $4.50 right now for a quart sized container, $5.60 reg. So for $9.50 plus time and electricity we are getting the equivalent of spending $15-20 with tax on broth at the store. A basic chicken stock recipe can be broken up over multiple days (prep/ roasting and then stock making, which itself could take 2 days if you can’t leave your stock simmering while you are working or sleeping for instance)

by wendigibi