Chicken Foot Bone Broth

$20, 8 Quarts & One Old Presto

It is not as bad as it sounds! Well, maybe not to everyone… give me a chance to explain.

I am in my mid-fifties and I am already half tin woman, LOL. I have fused ankles, yes that is plural, and nearly 20% of the motion segments in my spine are fused. Needless to say, my overall range of motion is significantly diminished. To say that me and ol’ Arth-ritis are acquainted with one another is an understatement, I am sure there are a lot of y’all out there reading this that are feeling me right now.

Because of my anaphylactic-level shellfish allergy, many commercial collagen supplements are not something I am comfortable taking, especially when the source, cross-contact risk or manufacturing process is not clearly identified. At the same time, years of joint problems and multiple fusion surgeries have left me looking for practical ways to add more collagen-rich foods to my diet.

That is why we added chicken feet to this batch of bone broth.

Chicken feet are naturally rich in collagen-containing connective tissue, and during a long simmer that collagen helps produce the gelatin that gives bone broth its rich body. They are not there for shock value, and no, we are not sitting around eating chicken feet. They simply simmer along with the bones and vegetables, giving the finished broth the deep body and natural gelatin we were looking for.

 This was ALSO the first time either T-Bone or I had done any kind of home-canning or preserving before, but we were feeling adventurous.

We had stopped by an estate sale earlier in the summer, and there tucked into a closet was an older (the box gave it away) but otherwise nicely preserved and decently priced Presto No. 01745 16-Qt. Pressure Canner and Cooker.

We took it completely out of the box at the sale and let me tell you… The canner itself was in amazing condition, the vent pipe was clear and unobstructed, and the sealing ring was still flexible with no obvious cracking or damage.

However, with a used canner of unknown history, appearance alone should not determine whether an old sealing ring is serviceable. Presto recommends replacing the sealing ring every two to three years and replacing the overpressure plug at the same time.

The manual tucked inside carries a 2007 copyright, placing the packaging squarely in the late-2000s era, although the manual alone cannot tell us the canner’s exact manufacture date. That comfortably makes the one we got somewhere between 15-20 years old, and we are not mad about it.

While the estate sale tag had the price marked at $100, they were marking everything down by 25% making it a pretty solid deal at $75. I already knew that a NEW one was closer to that $90-100 price range, and we grabbed it and brought it home. Even small savings add up over time!

Fast forward a few months, we have been busy but there have been a couple of times in recent months when having bone broth on hand would have been really nice. We have talked about ‘brewing’ some up in one of my ‘cauldron’ pots 🤭😁. I have a couple of amazing 26+ quart, triple-bottom, stainless steel stew pots that I have had stashed for “something special” for the last decade of our lives together.

“Something special” was Chicken bone broth, BABY! Mmm, mmm, good!  We went over to the store and picked up 6 leg-quarters, a couple of Giant carrots, a couple of large white onions, a couple bell peppers, some celery, and 1 pound of chicken feet for a little under $20 and I already had all of my spices: I used 6-8 Bay leaves (I didn’t count 🤭or measure really…I just measure with my heart… I am so sorry🥴🤷🫶 ) I used about 6-8 whole garlic cloves peeled and smashed, AND about ½-3/4 tsp of very strong garlic powder, 3/8-ish tsp onion powder, 2 Tbsp Poultry seasoning, 1 tbsp Basil and rubbed sage.

The Process We Used…
I cooked the leg quarters and all of the vegetables for 1-1/2 hours and then fished out the chicken legs. T-Bone took all the meat off the bones and put the BONES back into the broth pot. I added the chicken feet and about 2 tbsp of salt to the vegetables and bones. We also had the carcass from a rotisserie chicken we had already eaten, so those bones went into the pot too. This SIMMERED overnight, from about 11pm until about 6:30 am. The next morning, we got up and double strained the broth to make sure it was as clean as I prefer it to be and put it into jars; we had 5 quarts, 2 pints and 1 half gallon.

Now, if you are out here paying grocery store prices for BONE broth, you understand our excitement! We are talking about 8 QUARTS of bone broth that we produced and safely canned 6 quarts of it in our own kitchen (without the cost of the Presto Canner and Jars, because those items can be reused over and over again) for less than a $20 bill, and had we gone out and bought them like we USED to, we would have paid more than we did for the canner… because to find quality food we are having to spend more and more to feed our families.

I did not process the half-gallon in the Presto canner. I planned on using that amount right away. The quarts and pints, I wanted to put away for future use. Everything went so well.

We were nervous, but we read the directions that came with the canner, we looked up additional directions online and asked other online questions as well. That is one thing we are not afraid of… asking for help if we don’t know the answers. I reckon that comes from years in maintenance and research.

An Oldie But Goodie

The Presto No. 01745/0174510 is one of their longstanding models that is still in production and supported today “So, whether you are in the market for a new canner, get lucky and find one out in the wild, or happen across a used one online, replacement parts are still available to spruce up a unit in excellent condition like the one we found.

We felt confident in the condition of the seals, gaskets and vent pipe of our unit, however, we both have a lot of maintenance experience and some of my time was spent in a steam-press facility. I have seen what repeated exposure to high-pressure, high-heat steam can and will do to rubber gaskets and sealing materials. If you buy a used pressure canner and do not know the age or service history of the sealing ring and overpressure plug, replacing them before putting the canner into service is cheap insurance. As they say, Safety First!

Need a replacement part? Click the Presto part number in the table below to go directly to the Amazon listing we found for that part.

Part	Presto Part No.
3-piece adjustable pressure regulator	Presto 50332
Sealing ring + overpressure plug	Presto 09985
Overpressure plug	Presto 09915, 6-Pack
Air vent / cover lock	Presto 85407
Vent pipe assembly	Presto 85608
Body handle	Presto 85709
Cover handles	Presto 85803, 2-Pack
Canning rack	Presto 85707
Interlock gasket	Presto 85659

At the time of writing, we found many of the common replacement parts for this Presto on Amazon simply by searching the Presto part number.

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Happy Canning!