Food - Drink
Why Chicken Soup Isn't Made By Simply Boiling A Whole Chicken
By ERIN SHAW
One of the easiest ways to make chicken broth is by boiling a leftover chicken carcass, but cooking all the chicken meat along with the bones makes the broth much richer. However, you can't plop a whole chicken into a pot and simply let it boil for best results, because different parts of the chicken cook at different rates.
Breast meat tends to dry out before dark meat is done, so to achieve evenly-cooked chicken, you'll need to do a little butchering partway through simmering your broth. Start with boiling the whole chicken, but remove the bird from the pot when the breasts reach 155 degrees F, which is usually around 20-25 minutes in, per Bon Appétit.
After taking the chicken out, pull the breast meat off the bone, place the rest of the carcass (legs, thighs, and wings) back into the pot, and let it simmer for the rest of its cooking time, around 40 minutes. You can then strain the finished stock, discard the bones, shred all the meat, and add it back to the broth for perfect chicken soup.