My boyfriend and I are new to cooking and might have made a few errors while making our chicken stock overnight. This is what happened, can someone tell me if our broth is still safe to eat? We started this pot at night, around 8pm.
We stuck a whole chicken in a huge pot of water with some veggies added for aromatics and brought it a strong boil and then simmered for maybe 1 hr and 20 min.
At this point, we turn off the stove and take the chicken out to break down all the meat and put the bone carcass back in the pot.
We turn back on the stove and decide to let the bone broth keep going overnight. It's probably 9pm and I'm already upstairs and he turns back on the stock but doesn't close the lid all the way, leaving it 25% exposed all night.
I wake up at 5:30am and find the pot of stock is gently bubbling and has completely reduced, with maybe 3.5 inches of concentrated broth in a large pot, with all the bones exposed and maybe halfway covered in water.
I fill up the pot again with room temperature water and close the lid, not adjusting the heat. Maybe 20 minutes later I decide I probably should bring it to a boil to be safe, and at this time I fish out all the veggies since I don't want them to break down more. The carrots and celery stalks are all still intact, just really soft. Onions were still somewhat intact but I think a lot of them turned to mush in the pot overnight.
Now we are just going to let it simmer for a tiny bit more to get everything reconstituted.
After doing research I'm not sure if this pot of stock is salvageable and safe to eat, can someone advise me on whether to dump this or if it's okay to use this stock to make soup?
Thank you so much for your help :)!
