What?!
Yes. It was such a simple idea I could've kicked myself.
Here's the plan:
Grab yourself a gallon sized plastic baggie and start filling it with scraps. Any chicken bones, carrot tops, celery ends, onion roots, tops from leeks, mushroom stems... the list goes on. Stash the bag in one of those haunted, vacant corners of your freezer. Any time you have new scraps, toss 'em in. Don't throw out your raw chicken skin and bones after you de-skin and de-bone some chicken thighs, folks! It goes in the bag. Please don't throw out the stems from your parsley. The bag calls to you. The sorry, stripped carcass of your store bought rotisserie chicken? Goes in the bag. All of it. ALL OF IT.
When the bag is full, its time to have some fun. Depending on the types of scraps you collected and the way you like to flavor your chicken stock, you might want to pick up one or two things at the grocery store on your weekly fresh produce trip. I like to hack up and freeze hunks of ginger, for instance. I'll toss a piece in along with four or five (or most of a head...) of garlic.
Empty the whole bag of scraps right into your crock pot. Just dump it right in. Don't be shy. No, there's no time to thaw! Just do it. Pitch in a bit of salt (or a small handful if you use kosher or other coarse salts). Next, stick it right under your tap and fill it up till either everything is covered by about a half to one inch of water or until its half an inch under the rim of your crock.
Now for the complicated part. No, I'm lying. Nothing about this is complicated. Put your crock in the crockpot base, plug it in, and turn it on low. Put the cover on and go to sleep, go to the movies, watch a Firefly marathon, or anything you like. Leave it alone for about 10-12 hours. It can even go a bit longer if you lose track of time.
Be warned: The smell will be nearly enough to cause insanity.
Once its all done, turn it off and let the liquid cool. You'll want to strain out the bones and veggie bits since they've given their all for your taste buds. I use a colander on top of my soup pot with a re-usable coffee filter inside. The coffee filter does a stellar job of straining out the sludge that can sometimes accumulate in the stock. Other folks use fancier things like cheese cloth and chinoise, but I'm all about the cheap. Walmart and 4.93 hooked me up with a pretty gold mesh coffee filter.
After its all strained, give it a taste. It'll probably taste a bit watery, but a few pinches of salt will cure that. OR you could pop the pot on the stove and reduce it down some and make a glace. Sounds fancy.
If you're going for a normal stock, though, toss it in the fridge either overnight or through the day. The fat will rise to the top as it cools and you can skim that off (and cook some freakin' tasty homefries in it!). Congrats. You're all done! Pour it into some quart containers courtesy of the dollar store and freeze anything you're not going to use in the next few days. Or give it away if you're nicer than me.
If your stock looks like jello after chilling... Yay! That means its awesome and full of natural gelatin from the bones. My first stock caused a great deal of concern and furious googling when it did that. Turns out, life was good and so was my stock.
There you go. Not only did you save $3-4 a quart, you prevented food waste and made yourself something super tasty. Not bad, right?
