Recipe: Making soup stock from stuff you’d normally throw out

Ingredients:

• Bones (ex: chicken carcass, ham bone, beef rib bones)
• Water
• Optional: Bits and pieces of vegetables
• Optional: Bits and pieces of herbs
• Optional: Pan drippings from roasts, fried sausage, fried bacon
• Optional: Dribs and drabs of sauces and spices (think leftover packets from take out food)

Directions:

1. Throw your bones and whatever veggies, herbs, drippings and leftover sauces/spices into a big pot full of water. Don’t get too carried away with sauces/spices. One or two complimentary flavours is plenty.
2. Bring water to a boil then reduce heat to simmer. Simmer 1 to 3 hours. The longer you simmer, the more flavourful your stock will be.
3. Strain stock with a pasta strainer and store in whatever containers you have on hand in the fridge for about a week or in the freezer for 3 to 6 months. Leave 2” or so room in the container as the broth will expand (like ice cubes do) when it freezes.
4. Eat broth as is, use to make soup or use instead of water to make things like rice or quinoa.
5. Mom reuses her bones twice (makes two batches of broth from each chicken carcass).
6. Note: You can use fresh veggies like I did, but my mom just keeps a container full of vegetable peels, onion skins, pan drippings and herb stems in her freezer for making stock whenever she has enough bones.
7. Note: Don’t use “brassicas” — broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage (they wreck your stock)