Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Stock it up
Homemade vegetable stock doesn't have to be an expensive or complicated thing to make -- though a person could certainly make it that way. But it's ridiculously delicious.
The Reverend mentioned to me a few months back that he had taken to storing up some of his more flavorful veggie scraps in the freezer until he had enough to make some vegetable stock. So I started back in January. Yesterday I pulled the bag out of the freezer -- a gallon-size ziplock that was mostly full -- and made myself some vegetable stock. I think there were some leeks, onions, carrots, thyme, rosemary, garlic, celery and probably a few other items in there. I also had a soup base that I started back in November that consisted of similar scraps -- though stored in a canning jar with a tight-fitting lid -- but mostly celery, garlic, ginger, peppercorns and lots of salt.
So I put about a 1/2 cup of that in with the veggie scraps and placed it all in a metal strainer that fits into another large soup pot. Perfect for making stock. I filled it all up with water and left about 2 inches at the top so it didn't boil over and let it simmer on the stove all day while I did my chores and worked in the sunshine. I let it cool for an hour or two afterward and then poured most of it into 2-cup size containers and about 6 icecube trays and stuck it all in the freezer. This evening I filled up (well-labeled) quart-size freezer bags with the frozen cubes of veggie stock and put them back in the freezer.
Tasty.
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