Just kidding. You can have soup. In fact you should have soup. It’s cheap, easy and it uses up all of the odds and ends that will otherwise end up in the compost. I store some canned soups for those days when the girls have to heat up a quick lunch but it is really not much of a food. Canned soup has too much salt and lots of the GMOs that we are trying to avoid.
Making your own soup is really a breeze if you have stock on hand. Making stock takes some time but the stove does most of the work. Begin with your biggest pan. I like leek tops, onions with the skins (go light on the onions) mushroom stems, parsley, carrot tops, celery and maybe a bay leaf and some salt. Things to avoid are the Brassicas, potatoes and too much garlic. That’s it for vegetable stock. Adding a carcass from a turkey or chicken will give you a lovely stock too. If you want beef stock look for some short ribs or another boney piece and brown it well before you add it to the stock. A tablespoon of vinegar to the water is supposed to help release the nutrition from the bones. I ry to crack bones to get some of the marrow into the stock. That jelly stuff that sits under the fat when you cook meat is great stuff. You can freeze it until you are making stock but toss out the fat unless you have a use for it. I simmer my stock for a good hour and sometimes more. Then strain it through a colander and press the leavings to get ou all of the flavor. If you stock has meat in it, let it cool so the fat will rise to the top. It will peel right off. Now you can freezer the stock or can it. It must be pressure canned, no matter what anybody tells you. This is a low acid food.
I freeze stock in amounts from 1 cup to 1 quart. I cook rice and savory grains in stock rather than plain water. It adds a depth of flavor, trace nutrients and color to otherwise bland foods.
As I cook, I put the bits and pieces I need for stock in a plastic bag in the freezer. When I have enough I put them in the stock pot while still frozen. If you are trying to save on space, the stock can be strained and simmered longer to concentrate it. Just add more water when you use it.
February 26, 2010 at 9:17 am
Homemade chicken stock is our anchor in the kitchen. We do three chickens at a time in a huge pot and freeze the stock. Here’s an easy, rich, satisfying cannellini bean soup. It could be prepared using dehydrated veggies, but I think it really shines with good stock as a base. We always have cooked bacon in the fridge, so we just crumble it atop the soup bowl with a drizzle of olive oil and some grated parm. This basic recipe has some gourmet window dressing around it, but it’s so simple:
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/white-bean-soup.html
February 26, 2010 at 9:44 am
Help, please! I made chicken stock last week from a leftover roasted carcass. The next morning, when I looked in the container, the top was yellowish, but the bottom had more of a brownish color. When I used it, I just poured the “good” stuff off the top. The brownish stuff on the bottom looked unappealing, to say the least. What I used tasted fine, but I obviously did something wrong. Suggestions?
February 26, 2010 at 10:11 am
You didn’t do anything wrong. There is always some sediment when you boil up a chicken. You can toss it as you did or use it. It won’t look as pretty but it should taste just fine. Next time, you could put some cheese cloth on the base of a colader when you strain it to prevent the problem.
February 26, 2010 at 10:18 am
The lazy way to make stock is to take all of the stock ingredients, put them in a crock pot and set on low all day. At the end of the day you have wonderful homemade stock.
February 26, 2010 at 10:33 am
I wonder if I could use my juicer for the veggies…
Still snowing here.
February 26, 2010 at 10:46 am
I also have a question. Other than healthy diet reasons, is there a reason why the fat gets skimmed off and discarded? I have heard this step in every recipe for stock or broth but have never heard if you can just leave it as is without discarding the fat. Is it there a storage safety reason or is it just the way most folks do it?
February 26, 2010 at 10:58 am
The fat wold be more likely to get rancid when canned I suppose but that’s the only reason. I actually keep a bit at least as it adds so much flavor and body to the stock.
February 26, 2010 at 11:34 am
The fat on the top is saturated fat, the least healthy fat for your body.
You must have planted a subconscious suggestion for soup, Kathy. I didn’t read this post yesterday but saw the first few lines in my reader…and ended up making soup last night. LOL
As you can read in my post (if ya want), roasted vegetables make it easy to throw together a soup fairly quickly.
February 26, 2010 at 11:54 am
The very first thing I canned after we got our pressure canner was chicken stock. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. I’ll never go back to store bought again. And it is so handy to have a bunch of jars in the pantry ready to put into whatever dishes need a flavour boost. Not to mention, having it ready made for when someone is feeling a little under the weather.
And another thing I really like about homemade stock of any kind is that because I made it, I don’t have to worry that there is MSG or any other additives in it.
February 26, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Kimmer, to get rid of the unappealing part without wasting any of the liquid, skim the stock more often as it cooks. When done, run it through a very fine strainer a few times, cleaning the strainer each time to catch those particles.
February 26, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Kathy – you forgot the part about dogs as part of the kitchen clean-up LOL!
When I make stock, there are always bits and pieces that are not appetizing, from veggie leftovers to gristle. As I go through the meat, I put that all aside as well as the carrots and celery that is now mushy. Dogs should not have onions or garlic, so I try to leave that out.
I mash up the veggies and toss it back in the pot with the undesirable meat, the sediment from the very bottom of the pot, water, and some white rice and cook it until the rice is tender.
We supplement the dogs food with this mix; I also make sure to keep some in the freezer in case I have a sick animal that needs extra coaxing to eat. The dogs love it, they get some extra nutrition, and for a sick animal (or an animal newly wearing a head cone), it is much cheaper than running back to the vet for an IV.
I do not feed the dogs chicken bones, but I do give them the large leftover beef bones. Because it can be greasy, I do it on a nice day out in the yard. If the weather is too nasty, I freeze them until later.
I also keep bags of turkey drippings in the freezer. We’re not big gravy eaters, but it can also make a big difference in appetite if an animal is not wanting to eat.
February 28, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Strangely enough, Bryant Terry recommends the “bag in the freezer for odds ‘n’ ends” to make stock with. (If you haven’t read his book “Vegan Soul Kitchen” you should!)
Soup is such an easy delicious meal, I should make it more often.
March 14, 2010 at 2:50 pm
I just use whatever unappetising food parts I have left at the end of a week: onion/garlic skins (there is no such thing as too much garlic in my world) carrot tops, broccoli stalk ends…. it all works. Nothing gets set aside especially for the stock.
Potatoes shouldn’t go in there but the water that they’ve been boiled in can be used to make the stock starchier. If I have ingredients that leave fat behind in the stock, the fat stays because fat is yummy and soup is still going to be less fatty than most other foods.