How to Make Chicken Stock in a Slow Cooker

I love to make home made stock but on the stove top it takes two hours which is not practical to do mid week when you want to make a homed soup.  I used to start the night before and cook the stock while I was making dinner until I got the idea to make stock in the slow cooker.  This was after I made a stock that got distracted on, boiled too hard and it got cloudy.  In case you don't know this already, the trick to a nice clear stock is not letting the liquid boil too hard.  I figured what the heck, I will give it a shot!  For any stock (which is cooked with the bones whereas broth is just cooked with meat), I use whole unpeeled garlic cloves.  Personally, when I get to the center of a head of garlic, the little tiny cloves in there are too much work to peel so I save those and then toss them into the stock pot.  I always use already cooked chicken when I am using a slow cooker for stock.  This is a two part post, next I will post another option for soups to make.  You can check out my earlier chicken chowder post in the meantime.

Ingredients:

Left over roast chicken, with bones and skin removed

3 whole carrots peeled, trimmed and halved or a 1/3 of a bag of baby carrots

3 stalks of celery trimmed and halved

1 onion, peeled and halved

8 cups of water

1 small bunch of flat-leaf italian parsley

1 1/2 tbsp of kosher salt

Add the ingredients to the pot starting with the chicken and ending with the salt, cover and and set on high for 8 hours.  Remove the chicken and any of vegetables you can remove easily.  Strain the stock and then pick over the chicken for any meat that you plan to use for future meals.