Meat stock is a pillar in healing a leaky gut but this rich food is beneficial to anyone. It provides large amounts of the immune system’s favorite foods, is very easy to digest, and is a great base to modify for other healing and nutritious recipes.
Meat stock is meant to be a meal in itself. It’s short cooking time allows the meat to remain edible while still enriching stock with easy to absorb nutrients. This is the perfect thing to eat anytime you are feeling ill or stressed or “can’t get filled up” hungry. These are some of the reasons meat stock is such an important part of the healing process of the GAPS Diet. Any time you are consuming meat stock on a regular basis, your body will be receiving the healing benefit.
Meat stock can be made into a soup or simply drunk on its own as a hot beverage with a meal. You can also poach a couple eggs in your stock for a rich breakfast. Stock can also be used to cook rice or other soaked grains to increase their digestibility and nutritional content. In short, this should be considered a staple to have in your kitchen at all times, either in the fridge or the freezer.
This recipe is stock without aromatics. I prefer stock this way currently because it’s a neutral base ingredient that can be changed in any way for any other recipe. Making stock this way, you can also feed your dog the extra chicken meat because the base doesn’t have onions. Make sure you debone the chicken before giving to your dog; they should not have chicken bones.
You’ll notice I set aside the breasts of the chicken. Good stock should be 80% meat and 20% bone with a joint. Using a whole chicken, this ratio is fulfilled without needed the breasts. You can use the breasts in other recipes or add to the soup later for more tender meat.
There are a variety of ways you can skim the scum off the top of your stock. I usually use a slotted spoon but you can also use a mesh scum skimmer, a slotted spoon, a small strainer, or a large soup spoon.
Skimming the scum off the top is where you can tell the quality of your meat. If your meat is poor quality, had a lot of hormones or was poorly processed, you’ll get scum that’s heavy, grey and unappetizing. If you have a good quality chicken, you will have a small amount of light almost white colored scum that appears as a lighter foam. This is also where you can tell if your meat has gone bad at this point. If your chicken is not good, you will smell an obvious sulfur smell.
You can store your stock in the fridge or the freezer, depending on how quickly you’ll consume the batch.
A note about Meat Stock and the GAPS Intro Diet:
When Dr. Natasha Campbell talks about meat in stage 1, she’s referring to eating primarily the gelatinous meats like skin, joints and connective tissue. When meat is added on Stage 2, she means the muscle meats, the only thing we Americans consider to be meat. Eating a lot of muscle meat can be constipating so if this is your issue, be sure to eat every last bit of the skin and joints.
Fill large stock pot with water.
Remove chicken from package and remove giblets from interior. Rinse chicken.
Cut chicken into 8 pieces, joints exposed. First, remove the wings at the base of the joint.
Slice the drumsticks, pop the joint out of the meat and finish slicing off the drumstick.
Slice down the center of the bird, exposing the back. Slice the back off.
With the chest cavity down, slice to the right of the breast bone, removing one breast and then the other.
Pull the tenders off the breast (the underside of the breast) and remove the skin from the breast. Set the breasts aside for a different recipe.
Optionally, seperate the drumstick from the thigh.
This is how your chicken should look once you've cut it into the pieces.
Place pieces of chicken into the water. First, the back, then breastbone, then wings, thighs, then the drumsticks. Add in all giblets and extra skin from breasts.
Meat should be covered with about two inches of water. Here I am measuring the water level with my finger.
Bring to a boil. It usually takes 10-15 minutes to bring to a boil.
Skim the scum off the top using a mesh scum skimmer, a slotted spoon or a large soup spoon. Try to leave as much fat as you can in the pot.
If you miss skimming the scum, your meat stock is fine. The scum is simply impurities. Removing them improves the overall taste of your meat stock but leaving them is not harmful.
Reduce your heat and leave the pot at a simmer for 1 - 1 ½ hours.
Longer simmering will make the meat tasteless. Longer than 8 hours causes the histamine amounts to be higher which can cause nerve irritation symptoms in people with a leaky gut.
Simmering means movement in the water and very little movement on the surface.
Remove the whole pieces of chicken onto a platter. I use a strainer to make it easier.
Allow the chicken pieces to cool.
Debone the chicken chunks.
When you find the heart - SCORE! Eat it! This is my reward to myself for deboning the chicken.
Make sure you remove only the bones! Everything else is delicious and healthy for you. This photo shows all that should be left after you have deboned the chicken.
Toss the bones or freeze them for bone broth at a later time. I don’t like bone broth so I toss them.
Once stock has cooled slightly, pour into jars or use immediately for soup, like this GAPS Legal Chicken Tortilla Soup.
If you’d like to freeze your stock, wait for it to cool to room temperature. This inhibits bacteria growth.
Then, to cool completely, store in the fridge.
Once your stock has completely cooled, add to a BPA free freezer bag. Lay inside a container to shape your bag. Freeze solid.
Do this one bag at a time!
After deboning the chicken, sift through the meat picking out all the skin and organ meat.
Add these back to your stock and blend them with an immersion blender or blender.
It will get frothy! Don’t be alarmed!
Chicken Stock
ingredients:
- Filtered Water
- 1 Whole Chicken
instructions:
How to cook Chicken Stock
- Fill large stock pot with water.
- Remove chicken from package and remove giblets from interior. Rinse chicken.
- Cut chicken into 8 pieces, joints exposed. First, remove the wings at the base of the joint.
- Slice the drumsticks, pop the joint out of the meat and finish slicing off the drumstick.
- Slice down the center of the bird, exposing the back. Slice the back off.
- With the chest cavity down, slice to the right of the breast bone, removing one breast and then the other.
- Pull the tenders off the breast (the underside of the breast) and remove the skin from the breast. Set the breasts aside for a different recipe.
- Optionally, separate the drumstick from the thigh.
- This is how your chicken should look once you've cut it into the pieces.
- Place pieces of chicken into the water. First, the back, then breastbone, then wings, thighs, then the drumsticks. Add in all giblets and extra skin from breasts.
- Meat should be covered with about two inches of water. Here I am measuring the water level with my finger.
- Bring to a boil. It usually takes 10-15 minutes to bring to a boil.
- Skim the scum off the top using a mesh scum skimmer, a slotted spoon or a large soup spoon. Try to leave as much fat as you can in the pot.
- If you miss skimming the scum, your meat stock is fine. The scum is simply impurities. Removing them improves the overall taste of your meat stock but leaving them is not harmful.
- Reduce your heat and leave the pot at a simmer for 1 - 1 ½ hours.
- Longer simmering will make the meat tasteless. Longer than 8 hours causes the histamine amounts to be higher which can cause nerve irritation symptoms in people with a leaky gut.
- Simmering means movement in the water and very little movement on the surface.
- Remove the whole pieces of chicken onto a platter. I use a strainer to make it easier.
- Allow the chicken pieces to cool.
- Debone the chicken chunks.
- When you find the heart - SCORE! Eat it! This is my reward to myself for deboning the chicken.
- Make sure you remove only the bones! Everything else is delicious and healthy for you. This photo shows all that should be left after you have deboned the chicken.
- Toss the bones or freeze them for bone broth at a later time. I don’t like bone broth so I toss them.
- Once stock has cooled slightly, pour into jars or use immediately for soup, like this GAPS Legal Chicken Tortilla Soup.
- If you’d like to freeze your stock, wait for it to cool to room temperature. This inhibits bacteria growth.
- Then, to cool completely, store in the fridge.
- Once your stock has completely cooled, add to a BPA free freezer bag. Lay inside a container to shape your bag. Freeze solid.
- Do this one bag at a time!
- After deboning the chicken, sift through the meat picking out all the skin and organ meat.
- Add these back to your stock and blend them with an immersion blender or blender.
- It will get frothy! Don’t be alarmed!