Don’t throw away scraps. Make homemade stock!
As I mentioned the other day, soups are a great way to make good use of leftovers and other little tidbits in your larder. (I love that word, larder. I suppose we could have called this the Larder Challenge. But, then folks would think I was really loopy. Huh.)
Soup is good food.
And it’s cheap, too. It’s silly what they charge for canned soups and broths these days, especially when you can make them for practically free at home. Case in point:
Around the holidays I bought a pack of steaks on sale. There were three New York Strips in the package; I paid $10, a much better deal than even one steak dinner at a restaurant. However, upon consultation with the hubs, it was decided that we would carve away the bone and slice the meat thinly to resemble carne asada. With beans and rice and a number of toppings, we made Rice Bowls with Grilled Steak.
Then I took the trimmings and the bones and made stock. See? Free food. Almost.
While he was carving, hubs asked, “Where’s the dog?” We no longer have a dog, but back in the day, we would have given the dog the scraps. I told him that the stock pot is the new dog.
Yes, you can quote me on that.
So, here’s how I made beef stock.
Recipe: Homemade Beef Stock
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- salt and pepper
- bones and trimmings from three uncooked steaks or other meaty bones (You can also use the drippings and bones from a cooked pot roast).
- 1 onion, thickly sliced
- 1/2 cup beer, wine, or water
- 10 cups water
- 2 carrots
- 1 rib celery
- 2 garlic cloves
- 2 bay leaves
- 5 peppercorns
- 3 whole cloves
- sprig of rosemary
- sprig of thyme
- 1 teaspoon salt
- freshly ground pepper to taste
Instructions
- In a large skillet, heat the oil. Season the trimmings with salt and pepper and brown in the hot oil. Remove to slow cooker.
- Fry onion in drippings in the pan until brown. Remove onion to slow cooker.
- Deglaze the pan with the beer, scraping up any brown bits.
- Add this liquid to the slow cooker along with all the other ingredients. Cook on low all day.
- Strain the stock. Discard solids. Adjust seasonings. Allow stock to cool slightly before refrigerating. After refrigeration, any fat will rise to the top. Remove this and discard.
- Use stock in recipe or freeze for later use.
Preparation time: 10 minute(s)
Cooking time:
Number of servings (yield): 8
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I love that – the stock pot is the new dog! Made me chuckle! The homemade stock tastes so much better as well!
My husband takes a salad for lunch every day, and I make them in big batches at the beginning of every week, so I wind up with LOTS of veggie scraps, so stock is what I do with them. I stick them all in a big freezer bag, and when I am low on stock (or have some bones on hand; over the holidays my in-laws sent the turkey and ham bones home with me) I stick them all in a pot with some water and seasonings and let it simmer for awhile. It’s a great way to stretch the grocery budget, and use up some scraps that would otherwise just be trashed!
How much do you suppose the scraps weigh? We have part of a cow in the freezer and the roasts have the bones in so I’ll be using a different cut of meat and I don’t want a tasteless broth by using too little!
I didn’t weigh them, but if you’re going to make roasts on several occasions, I would just save the bones in a freezer bag until you have several and then make stock. I do this all the time with chicken and turkey bones, so I am pretty sure it will work with beef bones.
And you can reuse your bones and make even MORE stock! It’s true! I don’t have a link handy, but Katie over at Kitchen Stewardship has a great post on it…somewhere. Great for cooking rice, pasta, couscous, whatever with a little more flavor, if the second (or third) batch of stock isn’t flavorful enough on it’s own for you. 🙂