The Weekly Waste Word: Making Stock

I try to eat as much of the food I buy as possible. I plan out meals before I shop, save leftovers and compost whatever’s left. But until recently, I hadn’t made stock from leftover veggies or bones. To put my money where my mouth is, I set out to make chicken stock.  

chicken bones, etc. ready to cookIn my mind, making stock seemed like the final frontier in food efficiency. Kind of like Native Americans using all of the buffalo, only a lot smaller.

The basics are easy enough–toss everything in a pot and let it simmer. Then I turned to this helpful page to answer the questions that remained.

One such question was whether to call it stock or broth. Using the above site as a guide, I boiled it down to this difference: stock takes three hours longer.

Whatever we’re calling it, I threw in some carromy simmering stockt peels, past-its-prime cabbage and the celery parts that I normally compost. About three hours later, the house smelled like chicken soup and I had about 6 cups of broth.

Now, the next time I say I’ve made a homemade soup, I’ll mean all of it. 

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