Why a Good Stock is Important

Stock is foundational to cooking.  Used in sauces, soups, main dishes, side dishes, the flavors in your stock permeate every part of the dish.  If your stock is flavorful and balanced, it will enhance your dish.  Flat and uninteresting stock adds nothing and can even take away from your final product.

This is true of all ingredients – spices, herbs, fruits, veggies, oils. Each ingredient adds something which is the very reason it’s important to use quality products in your cooking.

Once you’ve been making stock for a while, the recipe becomes ingrained in you and isn’t as necessary.  You know what you like and what you don’t and modify the ingredients to fit your taste.  When first starting out, though, it’s good to have a recipe.  Make it once or twice as is and then modify as you see fit.

Why I Make My Own Stock

I make my own stock for several reasons.

• It’s healthier than pre-packaged stock.  I know what goes in the pot, it’s fresh, and I can control the flavors.  When making chicken stock, I can cook it long enough to extract nutrients from the chicken bones, too.  You don’t get that with a store bought stock.
• It’s frugal.  I can use every last bit of my ingredients by saving scraps and freezing them until I make stock.  This way, I throw nothing away and don’t have to spend more at the store.
• I can make a pot of stock while I’m at home on Sunday afternoon or when I have a big baking day in the kitchen.  It’s not any extra trouble and only requires a small bit of planning on my part.

Why not just use chicken or beef stock?

Vegetable stock produces a light, fragrant broth that compliments a fish dish or vegetarian soup instead of competing with them like a chicken or beef stock would.  Of course, you can use chicken stock if that’s what you’re going for.  It all depends on your intent for the dish.

Vegetable stock is simple to make as it doesn’t require skimming or fat removal.  I can throw this together in 10 minutes and leave it to simmer away with virtually no maintenance.

Variations on a Theme

I’ve seen vegetable stocks with a variety of ingredients, including:

• potatoes
• tomatoes
• turnips
• parsnips
• bell pepers
• swiss chard

Roasting the vegetables before making the stock is also an option, which would yield a deeper, richer stock.

This recipe was adapted from Entertaining Light by one of my favorite cooks, Martha Rose Shulman.  She’s not sugar free or gluten free, but her recipes are always delicious and easily adapted to fit my needs.  If you don’t have any of her books, you should at least here and add one or two to you Amazon.com Wish List. I have most of her books but there are still a few on my list.

What are your favorite ways to make and use stock?

A Reminder – A month (or more…) of give-aways starts Monday with iHerb.com’s $50 shopping spree.  Make sure you stop by and enter to win this fun and useful prize!

This is linked to Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade.

Printer-friendly recipe

Vegetable Stock
makes 2 quarts
adapted from Entertaining Light

10 cups of filtered water
2 medium onions, quartered
1 leek, white and light green part only, cleaned well and sliced
6 garlic cloves, cut in half
3 carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces
3 celery ribs, cut into 1 inch pieces
4 sprigs of fresh parsley
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
10 black peppercorns
salt to taste if desired

Combine all ingredients in a large stock pot and bring to a simmer.  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for an hour.  Strain and discard vegetables.  Let stock cool and store in mason jars.

This freezes well and will keep for several days refrigerated in an airtight container.

Enjoy!

© Amy Green for Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free, 2010. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us

There is something alluring about making stock – not in a flashy way, but a subtler, quieter appeal that pulls me into the kitchen.  The way the rich smell of the stock fills our home, the simple ingredients that come together to create a nutritious, flavorful base for so many different dishes, the sound of the hot liquid as it simmers.  The entire process grounds me and brings me joy.

If you’ve never made stock, it’s not difficult at all.  Everything goes in a pot, you let it simmer for a long time, and then take the stuff out of the pot.  It’s impossible to mess up.  I put it in jars and freeze it until I need it for a recipe.  Homemade stock tastes much fresher and there is satisfaction for me in knowing that the entire dish was made from scratch, even the stock.

You can make stock out of a roasted chicken carcass, which I do.  This recipe, though, uses a whole, uncooked chicken.  I pull all the meat off of the chicken once the stock has finished cooling and use it in other dishes.  Tomorrow I’ll post one of our favorite ways to use it – a simple and delicious chicken bake you can make even on busy nights.

This is also a money-saver, which I love – if I bought stock at Costco, it would be $10 for 6 quarts.  For about $3.50 I can make 4 quarts of stock and have meat from a whole chicken that will feed us for two nights plus leftovers.  Also, If I know I’m going to be making stock I save my carrot peels, onion tops, and ends of celery and throw them in my stock pot, too.

Here are some ways to use all that stock you’re going to make:

• Shirley at Gluten-Free Easily’s Tasty Tortilla Soup
• Gluten-Free Homemaker’s Why I Love Soup
• My Meatballs with Fresh Veggie Sauce & Peas

Update 10/8/09:  This post is linked to Kitchen Stewardship’s October Fest of Super Foods.

Printer-friendly recipe

Chicken Stock
makes about 4 quarts

1 whole chicken, about 3 pounds
2 large unpeeled carrots, cut into 3 pieces
2 stalks celery, cut into 3 pieces
½ head of garlic, unpeeled and cut in half
1 large white or yellow onion, unpeeled and cut in quarters
5 stems fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon whole black Tellicherry peppercorns

Rinse chicken and remove any giblets.  Place all ingredients in stock pot and fill pot with water leaving and inch and a half at the top.  Bring to a gentle boil, uncovered,  and then reduce to a simmer.  Simmer uncovered for 4 hours, skimming any scum that rises to the top.

Let stock cool.  Remove chicken to a large plate.  Discard the vegetables and herbs.  Place cooled stock in refrigerator overnight.  Remove any solidified fat, strain through a fine mesh strainer, and place in glass mason jars.  Refrigerate or freeze until ready to use.

For the chicken:
Remove skin and discard.  Take meat from bones and use anyway you choose.

© Amy Green for Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free, 2009. | Permalink | 32 comments | Add to del.icio.us