Stock

Aren’t these beautiful?

In the strainer are carrot peels, leek trimmings and the ends of off of some zucchini, the remnants of one night’s dinner.  They are also the basis for one of the basics of my pantry:  stock.

How I make stock has changed and evolved over the years, but I have made stock as long as I can remember, certainly as long as I have been established in my own home with some control over the preparation of food.

For many years, mostly through my 20s and 30s, I periodically made huge batches of stock, which I stored in the freezer.  I would search the weekly sales flyers from the the local grocery store and when chicken was on sale really cheap, usually less than $1 a pound when I was in my 20’s I would buy 18 to 20 pounds and make a huge pot of stock.  I had 20 and 30 quart stock pots that I got at a restaurant supply store.  The process would take all day, but I would have a lovely supply of stock for my freezer.  In those days I could get beef bones from my local butchers at very low prices as well, so I usually had a supply of beef stock and chicken stock.  I liked adding veal knuckles to my stock but they were expensive and had to be ordered.  Stock making was a regular part of our lives like the waxing and waning of the moons and it followed its own cyclical path.

Things have changed.  Oh I always saved bags of things for stock:  potato peels, onion peels, bones, etc.  But the stocks I made were primarily made from fresh ingredients.  Gradually I started separating out my stocks:  making less frequent batches of the beef and chicken stocks, and making more frequent batches of what I would call "secondary" stock.  The secondary stocks worked fine for soups and many dishes. True the flavor of any meal might not be as exact as if I used the same recipe and the same stock every time, but I am not running a restaurant here, and my interests have expanded over time.  I think I am less willing to spend my time devoted just to food. 

All the local butchers went out of business and it became harder and harder to make beef stock.  So I relied on chicken stock and secondary stock, which often contained beef  bones. 

Then I learned more about free range, grazed, organic, and antibiotic free meat.  I still bought cheap meat for the stock, but I was mostly eating better stuff, and the bones would be saved.  A couple of years ago a butcher opened in my neighborhood that sells only grazed beef, pork and lamb, and organic chicken and poultry.  There is also a very good poultry farm not far away which sells only ducks, pheasants and chickens they raise in their cage free, free range poultry farm.  Now I buy most of my poultry and meat from these vendors.   When I want to make a pure chicken stock, I buy an old laying hen, which makes a nice strong intense chicken stock.  And although there is a good butcher nearby, he makes his own stock to sell, and that stock is pretty good.  Since he sells beef, lamb and pork, he usually has beef, lamb, and pork stocks.  His stocks are not quite as complex as mine, but they are still pretty good and I can enrich them if I want.  They are still better than what I find in the grocery store. Besides I want to support his efforts as much as possible.

But I still make stock.  I just make it in smaller batches now, and I primarily make secondary stock. It is actually fairly rare that I need a particularly pure stock for a dish.  I still save up bags of vegetable trimmings that are otherwise in good shape.  I keep them in the freezer, and when I have a gallon to a gallon and a half I throw them in my crockpot with some water, peppercorns, a bay leaf and some nutmeg.  Depending on the vegetables present and what kind of meat bones I have added to the bag I might add other herbs as well.  Stock is also the perfect way to use up fresh herbs that are about to go to waste, or to use the stems from those little bunches of herbs I buy at the grocery store.

And the stock is wonderful.  I cook it in the crockpot overnight so I wake up in the morning to the rich smell of meat broth, mouth-wateringly yummy!    The small batches are wonderful and usually get used up within a few days to a week, just in time for a new bag of trimmings to be waiting to be used in another batch of stock. 

I think cooking the stock in the slow cooker gives me a more intense flavor.  I like to think, or I hope that it uses less energy as well.  My slow cooker is 225 watts and I run it about 8 to 10 hours.  The same volume of stock on the stove would have to go on my large burner, which is 2500 watts, although I don’t have it on hight most of the time, and takes about 3 hours.  Does the burner use one-third of the energy when it is on 1/3 power?  I can’t find information about that but I suspect not, it probably uses more.  It may be close if the burner actually uses 1/3 heat, but I think I am better off using the slow cooker.  Besides I don’t have to be there to watch the slow cooker make my stock, it works while I sleep, or while I am away for the day.

After the stock is drained the leftover vegetables and bones still go out to the compost bin, substantially reduced in volume, and perhaps in mineral content as well.  But I am probably already planning the next batch of soup.