Drying Homemade Chicken Broth

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Chicken broth is our life blood here. We eat in in some dish every single day. When it’s healthy bone broth it’s so good for you! I’m going to be downsizing my freezer soon and I wanted to find a new way to store our chicken broth. Generally I freeze it in broth cubes but what I’ve started doing lately is making dried chicken broth, it takes up much less space!

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First I covered my dehydrator in wax/parchment paper. I have a few trays but not enough to cover the whole dehydrator. This works just as well. 🙂 I love my dehydrator, I have an L”Equip Filter Pro. It’s excellent for those of us with allergies and we literally have it running every day. (For homemade fruit roll ups, banana chips, ect)

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Mmmm, liquid gold. This batch was so nice and thick too! You can read all about cooking a whole chicken and making chicken broth here.

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Pour the broth onto the paper in the dehydrator, then use a spoon or something similar to spread the broth so it’s fairly even for drying. Make SURE you pour it on thick! Otherwise you won’t have anything to get off! Yes I was lazy and didn’t filter this batch of broth so there are chunks of chicken in it, oh well. 😉

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Set your dehydrator on 150 degrees for 8 hours. You may need more or less drying time depending on your dehydrator so check it often. You want to make sure it’s very dry when you are done with it.

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When it’s all very dry, remove the dried chicken broth from the dehydrator and break it into pieces.

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When you are done you have some perfect dried chicken broth powder! Of course unless you added salt this will be far less salty then store bought broth so you may not be able to use it as a 1:1 replacement for other broth in recipes without adding a little extra seasoning.

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Store it in a jar with a lid in a cool dark place or in the fridge.

Of course you can always can your chicken broth too if the goal is just to save freezer space! You should also be able to make this recipe in the oven if you don’t have a dehydrator. Just follow the same directions and put it on a very low heat (under 200 degrees) until dry. You will want to watch it very carefully.

Do you make chicken broth regularly?

merissabio

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22 Comments

  1. Wow, I never thought about drying chicken broth before, but it sure would take up a lot less space than freezing it!
    Thanks for this great post! I think I”ll do this in the future. 🙂

    1. Hi there! I found your dry cream of mushroom soup recipe and that led me to this recipe for drying chicken broth. We raise our own meat chickens and for years I would freeze the broth left over from parting out the birds. In the last couple of years I have canned it. You need a pressure canner, but I personally I love being able to go the shelf and open a jar and not having to prepare the broth for a recipe. I love your idea of drying it also, but I wanted to throw that out there. I also grow my own shiitake mushrooms, so will be making your dry cream of mushroom soup recipe. I think I will omit the broth and just add it when I’m rehydrating the soup. Thanks so much for all your great ideas.

  2. I just finished my batch of broth this afternoon… I ran the chunks through my vitamix and it is a fine powder.
    Next time, I am going to add some spices to the broth before I put it in the dehydrator. So excited to experiment with it : )

  3. How did you keep it from running all over? I cooked my broth way down as a head start, but it was still very runny, and I couldn’t get it to stay on the trays. I linedmy trays with plastic wrap, but they are wide enough to need 2 pieces, and the broth was running under the seam.

    1. Was your broth thick? I used cooled broth so it was very think and gelatinous when I put it on the trays. Then I didn’t move the trays at all while it was drying to make sure it didn’t sloosh.

      1. It was still warm when I put it on the trays, and it was sloshing all over. I will have to try with chilled broth.

  4. I have a few questions–
    1. Is it okay to season the broth just the way you want it in the end before dehydrating, i.e. adding all the salt you need?

    2. Will this dehydrated broth need to be refrigerated, or what is the best way to store it after dehydrating it?

    3. How do you reconstitute the broth to its original form?

    4. How does the taste compare to when the broth was originally created?

    5. Finally, what is the difference between chicken broth and chicken stock? And can only chicken broth be dehydrated? I’m assuming maybe it’s the addition of vegetables.

    Thanks!!

    1. Yes you can season it exactly as you like it, all you are doing is removing the water from the liquid, everything else is the same but concentrated because the particles are closer together due to dehydration.
      No need to refrigerate, dry foods are shelf stable, this means that without water bacteria and fungi have a harder time colonizing. Always check your dehydrated foods before consuming them.
      It is reconstituted by adding it to liquid, remember all you did was take liquid, so adding liquid will make it as it was.
      It will taste exactly the same as before the water was removed.
      Chicken stock is made by using the leftovers from (example) a roast chicken, the peelings or tops of carrots and onions etc, it’s basically all boiled for an hour or 2 and then you strain (a colander will do) it to get the undesirable pieces out. Let it cool and the gelatin that exists in the bones, cartilage etc will make the stock like a jelly! Then you can smash it onto the dehydrator and let it do its thing.
      Broth is more where you leave better quality pieces of veg IN the liquid. It’s not so much a using-all-the-leftovers-strain-it situation.
      I hope this helps?

  5. We were gifted 24 pumpkins. We gave 7 away and then pressure canned 4 making 28 quarts. HOWEVER, the best thing we ever did was dehydrate them. After dehydrating, we used a spice grinder to make powder. THREE pumpkins fill a one pint jar!!! Talk about space saving===One Pint VS. Twenty-One Quarts!!!!!

    When I dehydrate the broth, I’m going to use the spice grinder and see how much I can put in a pint! It’s my new game. How much will fit in a pint? LOL! Thank you for all you do!

  6. I’m not sure how you are making the broth to be so thick it doesn’t pour out of the middle. I have been making broth my whole life and it has never come out that thick. How do you do that?

  7. This was wonderful.thanks for being direct and to the point.look forward to checking this site again.
    Curious what and how would I use powdered pumpkin.

    1. I make pumpkin flour and I use about 1/4 cup in pancakes, pumpkin muffins/bread and even white bread. I also do butternut flour and sweet potato flour.

  8. Can you dehydrate store bought chicken stock or broth and adding it to back packing recipes,
    ? What would be the shelf life or can I preserve it in Food saver bags then in Mylar bags for long term storage? Then how would you rehydrate it?

    Thank you I appreciate it.

  9. Hello, I found your website very helpful. I am new at dehydrating.

    I made chicken stock and want to dehydrate it to make a powder. The stock is in the fridge and is very gelatinous – I removed the fat on top – my question is: Does the stock have to be thick to dehydrate it? Should I cook it down as much as possible before placing/pouring it into the trays?

    First time at this is is kind of scary. Thanks in advance.