Friday, April 24, 2015

U is for Using Every Scrap

One of my favorite ways to use up scraps in the kitchen is by making chicken stock. I've been making broth for the past few years... ever since I started eating meat again.


Aside from it being good, frugal fun, I am deathly allergic to both celery and parsley, and trying to find a commercially made stock or even powdered bullion without either ingredient is, well... let's say it's a challenge. So basically if I want chicken stock, I've got to make it myself.

BTW - I've looked up the difference between stock & broth, and found a remarkable variance in the answer. Some folks say that stock is made with bones, while broth is made with meat. Others say that stock is "unflavored" while broth includes seasonings. I suppose if you're some sort of a gourmet cook the distinction might be a meaningful one, but since my main purpose here is to make soup that isn't gonna send me to the emergency room, I pretty much use the terms interchangeably.


Some folks make stock using pieces of chicken and cut up vegetables, but I sorta see this as a waste of food that could be eaten "as is," and I tend to see making stock as a way to use up chicken bones & scraps as well as veggie pieces that might otherwise go to waste.

I'd be hard pressed to say that I have a recipe for this stuff, since what goes into the pot varies tremendously with what I happen to have available, but here's the general idea.

First of all, I seldom have enough scraps on hand to make stock "from scratch" so I save them up in the freezer. I used to keep a "stock bag" - one of those gallon sized ziplock bags, but it was a real pain to wash, and I felt guilty tossing them, so now I use re-purposed gallon sized yogurt tubs.


So the stock bucket lives in the freezer and as I'm cooking things I save the ends & tougher outside skins of onions, bits of peppers & tomatoes, stems from asparagus and other veggie scraps. Most any scraps will do, though you generally want to steer clear of cruciferous stuff like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale and the like since it tends to get a bit bitter when you include it.

I also save chicken bones, necks, the wing tips, gizzards, and even hunks of skin & fat. Sometimes when I cook a whole chicken I cut out the backbone and surrounding meat before roasting it, and this makes a great addition to the stock. The only part of the bird I wouldn't include would be the liver since it tends to disintegrate and turn your stock all "livery."


In addition to all of this, I also save liquids to add to the mix. Things that work well are the juice from canned olives & mushrooms, liquid from rinsing out spaghetti sauce jars, (thanks to Lili at Creative Savv for those ideas) liquid that vegetables or potatoes were steamed in, (thanks to Cathy at Playing Hooky for that one) and, of course, the drippings from deglazing the pan after roasting any sort of meat or vegetable.

I save this stuff in mason jars in the freezer until I'm ready to make stock. I suppose some folks would say that you shouldn't add the salty stuff like olive juice to the stock, and instead add it to the soup itself, but it seems a bit academic to me, so I just add it when I make the stock.


Soooo... when I'm ready to make stock, I start by defrosting and browning any raw chicken bits in the bottom of my stock pot. If I've got some hunks of chicken fat I'll brown those first to liquefy the fat and help the other stuff not to stick, if not, I'll use a bit of olive oil. I find that browning the onion bits also adds a bit more flavor.

Browning the neck and gizzards
Once that's done, I defrost all of my jars of liquid & toss them in along with all of the remaining veggie scraps. If there's not enough liquid to fill the pot, I add filtered water until all of the solid pieces are covered. I also add a splash of vinegar - it's supposed to pull "good stuff" out of the bones.


Then you simply simmer it for a few hours. The longer you simmer, the more flavors you'll extract from everything, so I try to choose a nice chilly day to do this when it's nice to have something warm on the stove for 4-6 hours. I have honestly never made stock in the heat of the summer... I tend to just save things up until fall and make it then, but someone suggested to me (one of you, I'm sure) that I could make it in a crock pot in the garage during the summer. I may have to try that.

Anyhow, here's how it looks after it's simmered for about 4 hours.


When it's done you strain out all of the scraps and you're left with a flavorful liquid that makes a great soup base, or can be used in place of water in just about any savory recipe. Now, depending on how compulsive I'm feeling, I sometimes pick through all of the scraps and get every last piece of meat off of the bone to toss into my soup, and quite often I just proceed to the soup making right from there. Otherwise, I store it in mason jars in the freezer.


I did actually pull about a cup's worth of meat off of those bones, and I went ahead and used this batch to make some potato kale soup - I basically sauteed an onion, tossed it in the stock along with the chicken I pulled off of the bones, 3-4 cubed potatoes and one cubed sweet potato. I seasoned it with black pepper, cracked red pepper and oregano. Once the potatoes were cooked through, I added half a pound of chopped kale & about a half cup of sour cream. It turned out really yummy!


So that's how I make stock. Tell me... do you make stock from scratch? Do you think there's a meaningful distinction between stock & broth? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic!




24 comments :

  1. Boy, that soup looks good! I go through phases in making stock. There's never much chicken left on our carcasses because my husband cleans them really well (he likes to suck the meat off the bones) , so I'm not motivated to boil them to get the rest of the meat off. I have always included my cruciferous veggies in my stock. Maybe that's why I didn't think it tasted all that great. I'll have to try again without them.

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    1. I've heard that there is nutritional benefit to adding the bones even if there's not much meat on them - I think they add a lot of calcium and other minerals - plus the gristle and cartilage helps to give it that nice gelatinous texture. Does your husband even get all those tiny pieces out of the neck & back? That's where a good chunk of my soup meat comes from.

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  2. I'm like Live And Learn--I'm pretty darn good at removing meat from bones, so I don't tend to make my own stock, although when I roast a chicken in the crockpot, I save the juices, skim off the fat, and use that in my soups--I'm not really sure if that falls into the stock/broth camp at all, but it's tasty and we haven't died from eating it yet, so I'll probably continue doing it. Sara at Gogingham.com makes her own stock in a similar method to yours. I have great admiration for people like you who save all their scrappy scraps, but I confess, it's one of those frugal activities that seems like too.much.work for me to attempt.

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    1. Well, to be perfectly honest, my motivation is only about 10% frugality and the rest is all about the allergies. I just really love good flavorful soup, and since the only way I can get it is to make it myself, I'm highly motivated!

      And I'd LOVE to hear how one roasts a chicken in a crock pot. Do you add liquid or just stick the sucker in there and turn it on? Do tell!

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    2. I got the recipe from economiesofkale.com, actually. You can season it up any way you want to--plop it in the crockpot (I use approximately a 5# bird) for 5 hours on high. I think she left the lid off at the end to crisp up the skin, but since we remove it anyway, I don't bother. I like to add about 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 2 minced garlic cloves, and a smattering of rosemary and pepper under the skin (something about the smell of the garlic gets my salivary glands going). I seem to have better luck with having a more moist bird when I cook it this way, and the timing of it typically works better for my schedule versus cooking it in the oven. If you want, you can slice up potatoes and other root veggies at the bottom--my kids don't care for veggies cooked like that so much, so I don't often do it.

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    3. Very interesting. I'm really surprised that it doesn't stick and make a mess. I'll have to give this a try!

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  3. I love your cat pics in your posts. AND I think you have a great idea for making good stock that doesn't taste like dish water. I wish I had a bigger freezer than the one in my fridge, but I can still take some of what you said an use it. I use the word stock/and broth interchangeably, but I am no expert.

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    1. I finally broke down and bought a chest freezer a few years ago. Part of me feels like it's a waste of electricity, but it sure makes things more convenient when it comes to stuff like freezing garden produce and batch cooking. It does cut both ways though as I am, ahem, prone to putting things in there and then completely forgetting about them. I'm trying really hard to eat through my stash right now so I can get it defrosted and cleaned out before next fall when it will get filled with zucchini once again! :-)

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  4. What a great idea. I save my scraps in the freezer to later compost but combine all of the scraps together (such as fruit peels with the veggies) so not necessarily good for making stock/broth. I will have to find a container to store just my veggie scraps for making stock.

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    1. Hope it works for you! It's made an enormous difference in the quality of soups I've been able to create!

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  5. My stock is usually very simple. I don't save a load of stuff up to go into it, I just use what I have after a roast dinner. That is, I strip all the meat off the bones, break the bones up a bit to pack down better in the pan, and cover with water. I usually have some veg water left over from the meal, so that goes in, and maybe I have some leek tops, but often I don't add veg. I also leave the salt out because I'm quite likely to use it in a dish with salty ingredients, like bacon. I keep it in the fridge and both fat and stock will be used up within a week. As for bits of meat on the bones, there's very little because I strip it pretty thoroughly, and what there is I tend to pick out and eat when I'm straining the stock.

    I also make a 'mini stock' sometimes: After cooking steak or chops in the griddle pan, I drain veg water into the pan, heat a little and stir to get the meat juices into the water. That makes a very small pot of meaty liquid, which can add a bit of oomph to sauces or soup.

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    1. Well, that's a good way to do it... much less fuss and muss that way!

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  6. I didn't realize there was a difference. I just use Better than Boullion, I can't make anything taste that good.

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    1. Truth be told, if I could use that stuff I probably wouldn't bother making it from scratch.

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  7. For anyone who is short of room in the freezer, I keep my vegie scraps in a ziplock bag in the freezer.....or even 2 or 3 of them. They can squeeze into smaller spaces. I use the water from cooking vegies in a jar in the fridge for the 2 or 3 days before making the stock.

    Gosh, that soup looks good. I can almost taste it from here (Perth, Australia) .....lol

    Thanks for your blog by the way

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    1. Great point about the ziplock bags being more "squishable" in the freezer. And the soup turned out AMAZING! I wouldn't normally think to add crushed red pepper as a spice, but I stumbled upon a recipe online that called for it and thought I might try it out. I have to say, it's a keeper! Thanks for stopping by! :-)

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  8. Roast dinner soup was a favourite with my kids when they were small - boil up the chicken carcass with an onion for hours, take out the bones, throw in any left over veg, purée it and serve on Monday with lots of garlic bread. Tried it again last week, 18 year old did the Grumpy Cat "yuck" face!!

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    1. Oh no, not the yuck face! Well... I wouldn't take it too personally, I think it's pretty hard to please an 18 year old!

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  9. I don't eat meat so no meat stock for me but I have thought about trying to make a veggie stock. The onion skins always put me off though. Do you clean them first? There's usually bits of dirt in the ones we get and I just can't get past that.

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    1. Hmmm... well I do inspect them closely, and if there's any black mold on them I toss them. Sometimes I wash them if they look dirty, and usually I peel off at least the outer-most layer of skin. Hope that helps!

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  10. I’m feeling so dumb right now. I’ve made stock/broth before using chicken bones/scraps, but it has NEVER occurred to me to save veggie scraps and juices. Duh! That’s a really, really good idea. I assume it has a much better flavor that way. I’ve only done stock in the crock pot. I like it because I can start that in the morning and have it ready when I come home or have it going at night if I’ve made chicken for dinner.

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    1. Well... since I only recently started eating meat again, I used to make it with only veggie scraps! So I guess it was a natural progression.

      I'll have to try it in the crock pot - only problem is that my crock pot only holds about half as much as my stock pot. I suppose I could just make it more often - which might be a good idea anyhow!

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